Dynamical Mass Constraints on Transition Disk Perturbers with the G23H Catalog

arXiv:2602.07731 · astro-ph.EP, astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.SR · Submitted 2026-08-23 · Read on arXiv

Dori Blakely, William Thompson, Doug Johnstone, Jessica Speedie, Jerry W. Xuan, Simon Blouin, Jingwen Zhang, Jean-Baptiste Ruffio, Eric Nielsen, Brendan P. Bowler, Kyle Franson, William Roberson, Ryan Cloutier, Andre Fogal, Kaitlyn Hessel, Christian Marois, Alexandra Rochon

astro-ph.EP, astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.SR

Submitted: 2026-08-23

Updated: 2026-08-25

Comments: Accepted for publication in AJ

Project page: https://sefffal.github.io/Octofitter.jl

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: We present dynamical mass constraints on perturbers in 11 transition disk systems using a novel combination of calibrated Hipparcos and Gaia absolute astrometry data.

Terminology

Abstract

We present dynamical mass constraints on perturbers in 11 transition disk systems using a novel combination of calibrated Hipparcos and Gaia absolute astrometry data. Out of the sample of 11, we find support for companions in four systems, with significant detections in two. These systems are: HD 142527, where we clearly detect the known low-mass stellar companion HD 142527 B and MWC 758, where we detect a likely sub-stellar companion. We also find moderate evidence of companions to AB Aur and UX Tau A. For the seven systems with non-detections, we find no evidence for companions more massive than about 12 M Jup with a semi-major axis greater than 3 au for both HD 100546 and HD 100453, nor for companions more massive than about 3 M Jup with a semi-major axis greater than 2 au for TW Hya. We also find no evidence for stellar mass companions with semi-major axes between about 4 and about 25 au for HD 34282, HD 97048, CQ Tau and RY Lup. In addition to our fiducial model, we perform cross validation between astrometry sources. By comparing results across models, we find tentative evidence of a short timescale excess astrometric noise that may impact some protoplanetary disk systems. We conclude with predictions for the prospects of making dynamical mass constraints on protoplanets in protoplanetary disk systems with Gaia data release 4 using detailed simulations of Gaia DR4 data of PDS 70 and WISPIT 2.

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