Astronomical Cardiology: A Search For Heartbeat Stars Using $\textit{Gaia}$ and $\textit{TESS}$
Heartbeat stars are a subclass of binary stars with short periods, high eccentricities, and phase-folded light curves that resemble an electrocardiogram. We start from the $\textit{Gaia}$ catalogs of spectroscopic binaries and use $\textit{TESS}$ photometry to identify 112 new heartbeat star systems...
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Maynooth Academic Publishing
2025-07-01
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| Series: | The Open Journal of Astrophysics |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.142226 |
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| Summary: | Heartbeat stars are a subclass of binary stars with short periods, high eccentricities, and phase-folded light curves that resemble an electrocardiogram. We start from the $\textit{Gaia}$ catalogs of spectroscopic binaries and use $\textit{TESS}$ photometry to identify 112 new heartbeat star systems. We fit their phase-folded light curves with an analytic model to measure their orbital periods, eccentricities, inclinations, and arguments of periastron. We then compare these orbital parameters to the $\textit{Gaia}$ spectroscopic orbital solution. Our periods and eccentricities are consistent with the $\textit{Gaia}$ solutions for 85$\%$ of the single-line spectroscopic binaries but only 20$\%$ of the double-line spectroscopic binaries. For the two double-line spectroscopic binary heartbeat stars with consistent orbits, we combine the $\textit{TESS}$ phase-folded light curve and the $\textit{Gaia}$ velocity semi-amplitudes to measure the stellar masses and radii with $\texttt{PHOEBE}$. In a statistical analysis of the HB population, we find that non-giant heartbeat stars have evolved off the main sequence and that their fractional abundance rises rapidly with effective temperature. |
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| ISSN: | 2565-6120 |