An interferometric study of B star multiplicity

Understand

Massive stars can have extreme effects on their environments from local to galactic scales.

• While O star multiplicity has been studied over a broad separation range (to the point where absolute masses of these systems have been determined and investigations into multiple system formation and interactions have been performed), studies of B star multiplicity are lacking.
• Using interferometry, we investigated the multiplicity of a statistically significant sample of B stars over a range of separations (~0.5-35 au, given that the average distance to our sample is 412 pc).
• We analysed high angular resolution interferometric data taken with VLTI/PIONIER for a sample of 32 B stars.