Figure 3

Figure 3: The maximum initial orbital period (in hours) of two point masses which will coalesce due to gravitational wave emission in a time interval shorter than 1010 yr, as a function of the initial eccentricity e0. The lines are calculated for 10 M ⊙ + 10 M ⊙ (BH + BH), 10 M ⊙ + 1.4M ⊙ (BH + NS), and 1.4 M ⊙ + 1.4M ⊙ (NS + NS).