"Mass Discrepancy" for Massive Stars

(The components of V382 Cyg and DH Cep fill their Roche lobes, and in both cases we find masses substantially lower than the masses inferred from evolutionary tracks, suggesting that significant material has been lost rather than transferred. We confirm that this same trend exists for other systems drawn from the literature.) Our own data extends to only 15 M_{sun}_, although photometric inclination determinations for HD 191201 and HD 206267 should prove possible, and will provide examples of higher mass systems.

We briefly discuss suitable systems from the literature, and conclude that orbit solutions provide good agreement with the evolutionary models to 25 M_{sun}_. Beyond this, most known binaries either fill their Roche lobes or have other complications. We also discuss five systems for which our improved data and analysis failed to yield acceptable orbit solutions: EO Aur, IU Aur, V640 Mon (Plaskett's star), LY Aur, and 29 UW CMa all remained intractable, despite improved data.