Proper Motion of the Faint Star near KIC 8462852 (Boyajian's Star) - Not a Binary System

Abstract

A faint star located 2 arcsec from KIC 8462852 was discovered in Keck 10 m adaptive optics imaging in the $JHK$ near-infrared (NIR) in 2014 by Boyajian et al. (2016). The closeness of the star to KIC 8462852 suggested the two could constitute a binary, which might have implications for the cause of the brightness dips seen by {\it Kepler} (Boyajian et al. (2016) and in ground-based optical studies Boyajian et al. (2018). Here, NIR imaging in 2017 using the Mimir instrument resolved the pair and enabled measuring their separation. The faint star had moved $67\pm 7$ milliarcsec (mas) relative to KIC 8462852 since 2014. The relative proper motion of the faint star is $23.9\pm 2.6$ mas yr${}^{-1}$, for a tangential velocity of $45\pm 5$ km s${}^{-1}$ if it is at the same 390 pc distance as KIC 8462852. Circular velocity at the 750 AU current projected separation is $1.5$ km s${}^{-1}$, hence the star pair cannot be bound.

10 pages, 2 figures