SB2 and eclipsing binaries with GAIA and RAVE

Abstract

The expected performance of GAIA satellite on eclipsing binaries is reviewed on the basis of (a) combined Hipparcos and ground-based observations mimicking GAIA data harvest, and (b) accurate simulations using the latest instrument model. It is found that for a large majority of the 16000 SB2 eclipsing binaries that GAIA will discover at magnitudes V<13, the orbital solutions and physical parameters will be derived with formal accuracies better than 2%. For the same stars the GAIA parallax errors will be about 5 micro-arcsec, i.e. an error of 0.5% at 1 kpc, which will allow to iteratively refine of the parameters and physics used in orbital modeling. The detectability of SB2 binaries by the already up and running spectral survey RAVE is discussed. It is found that all F-to-M SB2 binaries showing a velocity separation >=35 km/sec and a luminosity ratio >=0.5 will be recognized as such.