Search Publications

Binary stars in the new millennium

Han, Zhanwen; Chen, Xuefei; Liu, Zhengwei

Binary stars are as common as single stars. Binary stars are of immense importance to astrophysicists because that they allow us to determine the masses of the stars independent of their distances. They are the cornerstone of the understanding of stellar evolutionary theory and play an essential role in cosmic distance measurement, galactic evolut…

The Milky Way, coming into focus: Precision astrometry probes its evolution and its dark matter

Yanny, Brian; Gardner, Susan; McDermott, Samuel D.

The growing trove of precision astrometric observations from the Gaia space telescope and other surveys is revealing the structure and dynamics of the Milky Way in ever more exquisite detail. We summarize the current status of our understanding of the structure and the characteristics of the Milky Way, and we review the emerging picture: the Milky…