The Influence of Binaries on Stellar Population Studies

A star in a binary may interact with its companion and this complicates significantly its structure and evolution. During several decades in the past many astronomers hoped that the number of binaries is small. This is sometimes reflected in theoretical studies dealing with large populations of stars where it is ASSUMED (without any justification) that binaries do not alter the results. The number of confirmed binaries increases as observations improve and we there­ fore thought that the ti...