No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
The discovery-and-identification probability for different shaped orbits of spectroscopic binary stars is estimated. The eccentricity distribution observed in the sample of ~1000 binaries with known orbits and appearing as strongly peaked toward e=0 is corrected for observational selection effects. The resulting e-distribution seems to be flat for e in the range ~0.05-0.6 with some excess of circular (or almost circular) orbits and a deficiency of orbits with e ≲ 0.6.