Preliminary results on a Virtual Observatory search for companions to Luyten stars

TL;DR

This paper presents preliminary results from a Virtual Observatory-based search for wide binary companions to high proper-motion Luyten stars, revealing systems with very low mass components and large separations that challenge existing formation theories.

Contribution

It introduces a novel virtual search method using the Aladin sky atlas to identify wide binary systems around Luyten stars with high proper motions.

Findings

Discovery of multiple wide binary systems with low-mass components.

Identification of systems with separations up to tens of thousands of AU.

Challenges to current theories of low-mass star and brown dwarf formation.

Abstract

The Aladin sky atlas of the Virtual Observatory has shown to be a powerful and easy-handling tool for the discovery, confirmation, and characterisation of high proper-motion, multiple stellar systems of large separation in the solar vicinity. Some of these systems have very low mass components (at the star/brown dwarf boundary) and are amongst the least bound systems found to date. With projected physical separations of up to tens of thousands astronomical units, these systems represent a challenge for theoretical scenarios of formation of very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. Here we show preliminary results of a novel "virtual" search of binary systems and companions to Luyten stars with proper motions between 0.5 and 1.0 arcsec/a.