Collaborating with "professional" amateurs: low-mass stars in fragile multiple system

TL;DR

This paper discusses collaborations between amateur and professional astronomers focusing on discovering and studying fragile, low-mass stellar multiple systems, highlighting the valuable contributions of amateur astronomers in this field.

Contribution

It presents real examples of successful amateur-professional collaborations in identifying and analyzing fragile low-mass multiple star systems, emphasizing the importance of such partnerships.

Findings

Discovery of several fragile low-mass multiple systems.

Successful collaboration models between amateurs and professionals.

Identification of some of the most fragile stellar systems.

Abstract

The boundary between professional and amateur astronomers gets narrower and narrower. We present several real examples, most of them published in refereed journals, of works resulting from fruitful collaborations between key amateur astronomers in Spain and professional colleagues. The common denominator of these works is the search for binaries, mostly nearby, wide, common proper-motion pairs with low-mass stellar components, including some of the most fragile systems ever found.