2015/05/31 by P. Jofre, P. Jofré, Thomas Mädler +7 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.IM #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stv1724
published online on MNRAS
openalex publication_date 2015/08/25 · arxiv created 2015/09/03 · arxiv updated 2015/09/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Distances to stars are key to revealing a three-dimensional view of the Milky Way, yet their determination is a major challenge in astronomy. Whilst the brightest nearby stars benefit from direct parallax measurements, fainter stars are subject of indirect determinations with uncertainties exceeding 30 per cent. We present an alternative approach to measuring distances using spectroscopically identified twin stars. Given a star with known parallax, the distance to its twin is assumed to be directly related to the difference in their apparent magnitudes. We found 175 twin pairs from the science public archive of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) archives and report excellent agreement with Hipparcos parallaxes within 7.5 per cent. Most importantly, the accuracy of our results does not degrade with increasing stellar distance. With the ongoing collection of high-resolution stellar spectra, our method is well suited to complement Gaia.