ADS 9731 is a star system that consists of six stars, located in the constellation of

Corona Borealis Corona Borealis is a small constellation in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations. Its brightest stars form a se ...

. Four of the stars are visually separate in the sky, forming a visual star system, which was resolved using

adaptive optics Adaptive optics (AO) is a technology used to improve the performance of optical systems by reducing the effect of incoming wavefront distortions by deforming a mirror in order to compensate for the distortion. It is used in astronomical tele ...

in 1995. Two of these stars were themselves found to be

spectroscopic binaries A binary star is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in w ...

in 1998, resulting in a total of six known stars in the system. It is one of very few multiple star systems known to have at least six members.

Hierarchy of orbits

The components are organised thus: Aa and Ab are yellow-white main sequence stars of spectral types F4V and F5V and 1.35 and 1.32 solar masses respectively, which orbit each other every 3.27 days. This pair is in a 450-year orbit with star B, a star of spectral type G4V that has around the same mass as the Sun. Star C is a yellow white star of spectral type F3V around 1.41 times as massive as the sun, which has just started brightening and moving off the main sequence. It is in a 1000-year orbit with a pair of stars, Da and Db, a yellow-white main sequence star of spectral type F7V and a red dwarf of spectral type M3V. Da and Db take 14.28-days to orbit each other. Finally the system of stars C and Dab, and the system of stars Aab and B, take over 20,000 years to orbit each other. The combined light from the whole system results in an integrated V magnitude of 6.9. Published

apparent magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's ...

s for the components vary greatly and some are certainly in error, but components A, B, C, and D are approximately of

visual magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's lig ...

8, 10, 9, and 9 respectively. Models of all six components show that Aa and Ab have magnitudes 8.5 and 8.7 respectively while the faint secondary to component D is about 16th magnitude. The CD pair is slightly brighter than the AB pair, although component A is slightly brighter than component C.

Gaia EDR3 The ''Gaia'' catalogues are star catalogues created using the results obtained by '' Gaia'' space telescope. The catalogues are released in stages that will contain increasing amounts of information; the early releases also miss some stars, espec ...

catalogues parallaxes for the four resolved stars, all at a distance of with a statistical margin of error of less than a parsec. The star system has been considered as a possible target for direct imaging searches for exoplanets, but no planets have yet been detected in the system.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:ADS 9731 F-type main-sequence stars G-type main-sequence stars M-type main-sequence stars 6 Corona Borealis Durchmusterung objects 139691 076563