Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

On Systematic Errors in Cross-Identification of Binary Stars in Gaia

E. Malik, P. Kaigorodov, D. Kovaleva, O. Malkov

TL;DR

The paper addresses systematic errors in cross-identifying binary stars across heterogeneous catalogs by comparing the ILB catalog with Gaia DR3–based NSS and WB binary catalogs. Using coordinate-based cross-identification analyzed over sky regions, it finds that dense stellar fields increase false positives while large proper motions increase false negatives, revealing limitations of a nearest-neighbor matching approach. It demonstrates strong sky-position dependence of identification accuracy and argues for incorporating additional star properties and adaptive matching radii to improve reliability. These refinements are essential for constructing a comprehensive, statistically robust binary-star ensemble from disparate catalogs, enabling more accurate population analyses.

Abstract

Using Gaia DR3 data, binary star catalogs have been created containing information on a total of more than 2.6 million pairs. This increases by more than an order of magnitude the ensemble of binary stars with known characteristics, which previously numbered about 140 thousand pairs. To perform statistical analysis of the complete ensemble of binary stars, including both previously known and newly discovered pairs, cross-identification by coordinates was carried out between the most complete pre-Gaia publication compilative binary star catalog ILB and data from binary star catalogs based on Gaia DR3 results. An analysis of the results of this identification was performed, showing the dependence of its characteristics both on the data from the source catalogs and on coordinates. It is shown that in dense stellar fields, particularly in the Galactic disk, an increase in the fraction of false positive identifications can be expected. At the same time, for systems with large proper motion, there is a high probability of a false negative outcome. Possible modifications to the identification method are proposed to reduce the role of the described systematic errors and increase the reliability of its results.

On Systematic Errors in Cross-Identification of Binary Stars in Gaia

TL;DR

The paper addresses systematic errors in cross-identifying binary stars across heterogeneous catalogs by comparing the ILB catalog with Gaia DR3–based NSS and WB binary catalogs. Using coordinate-based cross-identification analyzed over sky regions, it finds that dense stellar fields increase false positives while large proper motions increase false negatives, revealing limitations of a nearest-neighbor matching approach. It demonstrates strong sky-position dependence of identification accuracy and argues for incorporating additional star properties and adaptive matching radii to improve reliability. These refinements are essential for constructing a comprehensive, statistically robust binary-star ensemble from disparate catalogs, enabling more accurate population analyses.

Abstract

Using Gaia DR3 data, binary star catalogs have been created containing information on a total of more than 2.6 million pairs. This increases by more than an order of magnitude the ensemble of binary stars with known characteristics, which previously numbered about 140 thousand pairs. To perform statistical analysis of the complete ensemble of binary stars, including both previously known and newly discovered pairs, cross-identification by coordinates was carried out between the most complete pre-Gaia publication compilative binary star catalog ILB and data from binary star catalogs based on Gaia DR3 results. An analysis of the results of this identification was performed, showing the dependence of its characteristics both on the data from the source catalogs and on coordinates. It is shown that in dense stellar fields, particularly in the Galactic disk, an increase in the fraction of false positive identifications can be expected. At the same time, for systems with large proper motion, there is a high probability of a false negative outcome. Possible modifications to the identification method are proposed to reduce the role of the described systematic errors and increase the reliability of its results.
Paper Structure (6 sections, 3 figures)

This paper contains 6 sections, 3 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Data Used
  3. Results of Cross-Identification by Coordinates
  4. Discussion
  5. Conclusion
  6. Acknowledgments

Figures (3)

  • Figure 1: (a) Average within pixel distance between identified objects from ILB and the binary star catalog based on Gaia data (NSS or WB), expressed in arcseconds. Pixel size $\approx$ 3.4 $deg^{2}$. The image is constructed with equal-area HEALPix pixelization of order 5. Equatorial coordinate system. (b) Distribution of stars in the WDS catalog. Yellow color indicates pixels where star density exceeds 10 stars per pixel. Pixel size $\approx$ 0.8 $deg^{2}$. The image is constructed with equal-area HEALPix pixelization of order 6. Equatorial coordinate system
  • Figure 2: Example of a pixel with no identifications. Red asterisks indicate objects from BDB, blue—Gaia objects. Arrows show some assumed stellar displacements.
  • Figure 3: Average distance between identifications within a square degree as a function of the number of stars in this area.