Publications by James Binney
The LMC microlensing events: Evidence for a warped and flaring Milky Way disk?
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL 501 (1998) L45-L49
The persistence of warps in massive halos
GALACTIC HALOS: A UC SANTA CRUZ WORKSHOP 136 (1998) 379-381
Galactic astronomy
Princeton Univ Pr, 1998
GALACTIC ASTRONOMY introduces all astronomical concepts necessary to understand the properties of galaxies, including coordinate systems, magnitudes and colors, ...
The outer rotation curve of the Milky Way
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 287 (1997) L5-L7
The properties of main-sequence stars from Hipparcos data
ESA SP PUBL 402 (1997) 279-282
We received a sample of 6840 Hipparcos stars south of declination -26 degrees that (i) have MK spectral types in the Michigan catalogues and (ii) had spectroscopic parallaxes that placed them within 80 pc of the Sun. Of these, 3727 are well determined as luminosity class V and actually lie within 100 pc. From this subsample we can determine the distribution in M-V of main-sequence stars of given spectral type for spectral types that range from early F to early K. These distributions are significantly non-Gaussian, but when fitted to Gaussians they yield central values of M-V in good agreement with earlier estimates of the absolute magnitudes of main-sequence stars. We also determine anew the distribution of B-V at each spectral type. We find that the dispersion in B-V at given spectral type is very small.
The luminosity function of main-sequence stars within 80 parsecs from Hipparcos data
ESA SP PUBL 402 (1997) 485-488
The basic data discussed here consist of parallaxes and apparent magnitudes of more than 6000 stars with delta < -26 degrees from the Hipparcos Catalogue which were selected from the Michigan Spectral Catalogue to have estimated spectroscopic distances within 80 parsecs. The statistical properties of the sample are briefly discussed, and the luminosity function of main sequence stars is determined by the maximum-volume method from nearly 3000 stars with observed parallaxes greater than 12.5 mas.
The kinematics of main-sequence stars from Hipparcos data
ESA SP PUBL 402 (1997) 473-477
We analyze a kinematically unbiased sample of 5610 stars around the south celestial pole that (i) have MK spectral types in the Michigan catalogues with luminosity class V and (ii) had photometric parallaxes that placed them within 80 pc of the Sun. We bin the stars by B - V and determine for each bin the solar motion from proper motions alone. As expected, the U and W components of the derived solar motions do not vary significantly from bin to bin, while the V component varies systematically. As the classic Stromberg relation predicts, V is a linear function of the variance S-2 within each bin around the solar motion. Extrapolating V (S-2) to S = 0 we determine the solar motion with respect to the LSR, obtaining a significantly smaller value of V than is usually employed. Parenago's discontinuity in the dependence of S-2 on spectral type emerges with exceptional clarity.
On the deprojection of axisymmetric bodies
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 279 (1996) 993-1004
On the deprojection of the Galactic bulge
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 279 (1996) 1005-1010
The shape of the disk: Clues from the kinematics of disk stars
UNSOLVED PROBLEMS OF THE MILKY WAY (1996) 11-21
Dynamical models of the Milky Way
FORMATION OF THE GALACTIC HALO....INSIDE AND OUT 92 (1996) 393-402
Probing non-axisymmetry with proper motions
ASTRONOMICAL AND ASTROPHYSICAL OBJECTIVES OF SUB-MILLIARCSECOND OPTICAL ASTROMETRY (1995) 239-246
PREDICTING LINE-OF-SIGHT VELOCITY DISTRIBUTIONS OF ELLIPTIC GALAXIES
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 271 (1994) 949-957
THE PRINCIPLE OF LEAST ACTION AND CLUSTERING IN COSMOLOGY
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 271 (1994) 719-728