New northern common proper motion pairs.pdf

a r X i v : a s t r o - p h / 0 4 0 8 3 7 8 v 1 2 0 A u g 2 0 0 4 Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 000, 1–27 (2002) Printed 2 February 2008 (MN LATEX style file v2.2) New northern common proper motion pairs John Greaves 1 115 Borrowdale Walk, Northampton, UK Accepted 2004 ???? ??. Received 2004 ???? ??; in original form 2004 ???? ?? ABSTRACT A list of 705 new Northern Celestial Hemisphere common proper motion pairs as derived from the Second U.S. Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog is pre- sented, along with details of their separation, motion, brightness and colour. Objects of particular interest are noted, and the use of the catalogue for such work gauged. Key words: (stars:) binaries: general - stars: kinematics - astrometry - surveys - catalogues. 1 INTRODUCTION Common proper motion pairs are a subset of visual binaries where the stars share very similar proper motions but have physical separations such that not only is there little if any relative motion between the pair as measured over time- scales of a century or more, but often also with separations sufficiently large for it to be uncertain as to whether it is possible for the objects to be actually in orbit about each other. Most true binaries, including close pairs, will share a common proper motion, the ”common proper motion pair” subset contains a number of stars that cannot necessarily be shown to be orbiting binaries, yet have a coincidence of space motion with respect to other nearby field stars that leaves little doubt that they are related to each other. S W Burnham was one of the first to strongly note these stars and compiled a major list of them in his Proper Mo- tion catalogue (Burnham 1913). Later, partway tangential, lists occurred as an incidental result of Luyten’s high proper motion studies (e.g. Luyten 1980), resulting in the Luyten Double Star catalogue (LDS) (e.g. Luyten 1987). The Second U.S. Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog, UCAC2, (Zacharias et al. 2004, and references the