Orbits and Individual Masses of Some Visual Binaries

Abstract

The orbits of visual binary systems still attract the interest of many working groups in astronomy. These orbits are the most important and reliable sources of stellar masses. In the present paper, we computed the orbits and dynamical masses of some visual binaries using an independent code. We used the Kowalsky method to compute the geometrical elements, while the dynamical elements (the orbital period and the time of periastron passage) were computed by implementing the double areal constant. We used the developed code to calculate the orbits for four visual binaries: WDS J02262+3428, WDS J14310-0548, WDS J17466-0354, and WDS J12422+2622. We introduce a new orbit for the neglected visual binary WDS J17466-0354 and modified the orbits for the remaining three binaries. Using Gaia DR2 parallaxes, we computed the total and individual dynamical masses of the systems. Comparing the adopted masses with those derived from the mass-spectral type relation revealed good agreement.