Astrometric follow-up observations of directly imaged sub-stellar companions to young stars and brown dwarfs

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution imaging and statistical orbit analysis to investigate the orbital dynamics of sub-stellar companions to young stars, providing new insights into their formation and orbital characteristics.

Contribution

It presents the first significant orbital analysis of the GQ Lup system, constrains the orbits of several systems, and introduces a statistical approach for orbit determination from multi-epoch data.

Findings

GQ Lup shows significant orbital motion with eccentric orbits possible.

PZ Tel's companion has a highly eccentric orbit (e > 0.62).

No detectable orbital motion in DH Tau, HD 203030, and 1RXS J160929.1-210524.

Abstract

The formation of massive planetary or brown dwarf companions at large projected separations from their host star is not yet well understood. In order to put constraints on formation scenarios we search for signatures in the orbit dynamics of the systems. We are specifically interested in the eccentricities and inclinations since those parameters might tell us about the dynamic history of the systems and where to look for additional low-mass sub-stellar companions. For this purpose we utilized VLT/NACO to take several well calibrated high resolution images of 6 target systems and analyze them together with available literature data points of those systems as well as Hubble Space Telescope archival data. We used a statistical Least-Squares Monte-Carlo approach to constrain the orbit elements of all systems that showed significant differential motion of the primary star and companion. We show for the first time that the GQ Lup system shows significant change in both separation and position angle. Our analysis yields best fitting orbits for this system, which are eccentric (e between 0.21 and 0.69), but can not rule out circular orbits at high inclinations. Given our astrometry we discuss formation scenarios of the GQ Lup system. In addition, we detected an even fainter new companion candidate to GQ Lup, which is most likely a background object. We also updated the orbit constraints of the PZ Tel system, confirming that the companion is on a highly eccentric orbit with e > 0.62. Finally we show with a high significance, that there is no orbital motion observed in the cases of the DH Tau, HD 203030 and 1RXS J160929.1-210524 systems and give the most precise relative astrometric measurement of the UScoCTIO 108 system to date.