Resolving Pleiades Binary Stars with Gaia and Speckle Interferometric Observations

Abstract

The Pleiades is the most prominent open star cluster visible from Earth and an important benchmark for simple stellar populations unified by common origin, age, and distance. Binary stars are its essential ingredient, yet their contribution remains uncertain due to heavy observational biases. A resolved multiplicity survey was conducted for a magnitude-limited G < 15^mag sample of 423 potential cluster members, including sources with poorly fitted astrometric solutions in Gaia DR3. Speckle interferometric observations at the 2.5 m telescope of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow State University observatory were combined with Gaia data, enabling the identification of 61 resolved binary or multiple systems within the 0 04–10″ (5–1350 au) separation range. With speckle observations, we discovered 21 components in 20 systems. The existence of a Merope (23 Tau) companion is confirmed after several previous unsuccessful attempts. We show that the Gaia multipeak fraction is a strong predictor of subarcsecond multiplicity, as all sources with ipd_frac_multi_peak > 4% are successfully resolved. We found that 10% of Pleiades stars have a companion with a mass ratio q > 0.5 within the projected separation of 27 < s < 1350 au, and confirm a deficit of wide binaries with s > 300 au. An observed dearth of wide pairs with a large mass ratio (q > 0.55) may imprint the transition from hard to soft binaries regime at the early stages of cluster evolution. The total binary fraction for q > 0.5 systems is extrapolated to be around 25%.