The stellar system HIP 101227: is it a binary, a triple or a quadruple system?

TL;DR

This study uses advanced modeling techniques to analyze the stellar system HIP 101227, concluding it is a quadruple system with four similar, young stars, refining previous classifications.

Contribution

The paper provides a detailed dynamical and spectrophotometric analysis that accurately determines the system as quadruple, improving understanding of its composition and formation.

Findings

HIP 101227 is a quadruple system, not binary or triple.

The four stars are young, zero-age main sequence stars, less than 200 Myr old.

The system's total mass is approximately 3.42 solar masses, evenly distributed among the stars.

Abstract

In this paper, we present the analysis of the stellar system HIP 101227 to determine the actual number of components in the system, and their properties. We use dynamical modeling and complex spectrophotometric (involving atmospheric modeling) techniques with recent data, to determine the physical properties and orbital solution for the system, respectively, with better accuracy than past studies. Based on our analysis, we found that the system is more consistent with being a quadruple rather than a binary, or a triple system as that suggested by previous studies. The total mass of the system determined from our SED analysis is 3.42 $\pm$ 0.20 $M_{\odot}$, which are distributed almost equally between the four stars. The stars are found to be zero-age main sequence stars; i.e., at the last stage of pre-main sequence,with age less than 200 Myr and spectral types K0. All four stars have very similar physical characteristics, suggesting that fragmentation process is the most likely theory for the formation and evolution of the system.