The triple system Zeta Aquarii

Abstract

Zeta Aquarii is a bright and nearby (28 pc) triple star with a 26-year astrometric subsystem. Almost a half of the outer 540-year visual orbit has been covered in 238 years of its observations. Both inner and outer orbits are revised here taking into account recent direct resolution of the inner pair Aa,Ab. The inner orbit has a high eccentricity of 0.87 and is inclined to the outer orbit by 140+-10 degrees, suggesting that Kozai-Lidov cycles take place. The masses of the stars Aa, B, and Ab are 1.4, 1.4, and 0.6 solar. The age of the system is about 3 Gyr, and the two main components have just left the main sequence. Hypothetically, this system could have formed by a dynamical capture of the small star Ab in the twin binary Aa,B.

Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. 9 pages, 5 figures. Complete Table 3 is available from the author

References in corpus (4)

• The Dartmouth Stellar Evolution Database
• Speckle interferometry at SOAR in 2012 and 2013
• The unusual quadruple system HD 91962 with a "planetary" architecture
• Analysing weak orbital signals in Gaia data

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Orbit alignment in triple stars
• Searching for the near infrared counterpart of Proxima c using multi-epoch high contrast SPHERE data at VLT
• Multiples among B stars in the Scorpius-Centaurus association
• Investigating three Sirius-like systems with SPHERE
• Speckle Interferometry at the U.S. Naval Observatory. XXII
• Precision speckle interferometry with CMOS detector