The Interferometric Binary ϵ Cnc in Praesepe: Precise Masses and Age

Journal
Date Issued
2022
Author(s)
Leslie M. Morales
•
Eric L. Sandquist
•
Gail H. Schaefer
•
Christopher D. Farrington
•
Robert Klement
•
•
Mattia Libralato
•
Luca Malavolta
•
Domenico Nardiello
•
Jerome A. Orosz
•
John D. Monnier
•
Stefan Kraus
•
Jean-Baptiste Le Bouquin
•
Narsireddy Anugu
•
Theo ten Brummelaar
•
Claire L. Davies
•
Jacob Ennis
•
Tyler Gardner
•
Cyprien Lanthermann
DOI
Abstract
We observe the brightest member of the Praesepe cluster, ϵ Cnc, to precisely measure the characteristics of the stars in this binary system, en route to a new measurement of the cluster's age. We present spectroscopic radial velocity measurements and interferometric observations of the sky-projected orbit to derive the masses, which we find to be M 1/M = 2.420 ± 0.008 and M 2/M= 2.226 ± 0.004. We place limits on the color-magnitude positions of the stars by using spectroscopic and interferometric luminosity ratios while trying to reproduce the spectral energy distribution of ϵ Cnc. We reexamine the cluster membership of stars at the bright end of the color-magnitude diagram using Gaia data and literature radial velocity information. The binary star data are consistent with an age of 637 ± 19 Myr, as determined from MIST model isochrones. The masses and luminosities of the stars appear to select models with the most commonly used amount of convective core overshooting.
Volume
164
Issue
2
Start page
34
Uri
Url
Issn Identifier
0004-6256
Rights
open.access
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