A first-order dynamical model of hierarchical triple stars and its application

Abstract

For most hierarchical triple stars, the classical double two-body model of zeroth-order cannot describe the motions of the components under the current observational accuracy. In this paper, Marchal's first-order analytical solution is implemented and a more efficient simplified version is applied to real triple stars. The results show that, for most triple stars, the proposed first-order model is preferable to the zeroth-order model both in fitting observational data and in predicting component positions.