Sirius orbit period

[Katiie]

Hello guys, I hope you can help me with a question! I am still in school now but I'm very interested in astronomy so I decided to give a presentation in Physics about the Sirius star(s). I am currently looking for their orbital period but I find different statements on the web. In Wikipedia in German it says 50,025 years, but in English Wiki it says 49,9 years! And I also found numbers like 50,1 years or 50,08 years. The majority of these websites say 49,9 years, but most of them are some Islamic miracle claimers and I am not sure I can take those numbers for real! Do you know the most actual calculation of the orbital period of Sirius A and B? Would be a big help!

Thanks for any answers (and I hope my English isn't too bad)!

Greetings, Katie

[DirkSteele]

W.H. Van Den Bos published his result in the Journal Des Observateurs in October 1960 giving the period as 50.09 years ± 0.055

If you would like to take a look at the scan of the published work, link below will take you to it.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1960JO.....43..145V&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf

[Matt Scunthorpe]

Could just round it down and say 'about 50000 years' . I think with most stuff like this, its all done by calculations (as no one is around for 50000 years to see it, so you always get little discrepancies.

[alan potts]

It is not 50,000 years that is for sure, it is about 50 years. I have spent a lot of time looking at this with my various scopes. There is a thread in Observing Discussions call "Sirius and the pup that was frightened of the dark." Me and a few of the site members have been trying to spot the 'Pup' star as it is known, have a read and see if there is anything of use, these are all first hand accounts.

Alan.

[lunator]

Katie

It is around 50 years, the best place to get he latest information is the Us naval observatory, They have orbital periods for many doubles.

Cheers

Ian

[DirkSteele]

I think I know where the confusion about 50,000 years versus 50 years has come from. I have noticed this in financial reports of some European (and in particular German) companies I look at that they seem to use a "," when we would use "." and vice versa and Katie has done the same. Perhaps a German convention?

[Matt Scunthorpe]

Yes, that wil be my fault. I just copied the OPs orignal '50,000' lol. Ignore everything i say, its normally rubbish anyway

[Katiie]

I think I know where the confusion about 50,000 years versus 50 years has come from. I have noticed this in financial reports of some European (and in particular German) companies I look at that they seem to use a "," when we would use "." and vice versa and Katie has done the same. Perhaps a German convention?

Oh, I'm sorry! Yes, in Germany we don't do the thing with the comma in the thousands. 50,000 is 50000, I wanted to say that I read 50.052 and so on... (50 point...) Sorry for this!

So I can rely on Wikipedia? I think they would have changed it if it was recently calculated once again with a different result, wouldn't they? And this 49,9 years seems to be rubbish... Well, 49 and 50 years is quite a differnce I think.

Thank you very much for your help!

[Scott]

I would be inclined to say something like "estimates put the orbit between 49.9 and 50,1 yrs". If you say one,then someone will argue that it's the other.

good luck with it anyway