M.Sc. Astronomy, University of Sussex
Supervised by Dr. P.F.L. Maxted
Synthetic spectra of six OB-type close binaries are constructed based on Kurucz (1991) model atmospheres and realistic estimates of the signal-to-noise ratios to be expected using the Danish 1.54m telescope at La Silla, Chile. These spectra are used to test the ability of the disentangling technique to determine accurate system parameters. We find that for four of the systems, masses within an accuracy of 1% should be attainable. Extensive use is made of the option to estimate realistic errors from the scatter between multiple data sets differing only in noise. We find that these errors may be significantly larger than those estimated by examining the curvature of the residual surface. A variety of models of rectification errors are tested. Provided such errors are kept within 2%, the effects on the disentangling analysis are small enough to be ignored. Finally we examine the scale of distortion and proximity effects and test one model for representing them in terms of a varying light ratio. We find that for plausible variations, the effects on the deduced parameters are negligable. The suitability of the disentangling technique for the determination of system parameters is considered. We conclude that the technique does have some advantages over rivals such as cross-correlation, but that more work is needed before it can be applied with confidence.
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