Monitoring orbital period variations in eclipsing white dwarf binaries Madelon Bours Tom Marsh, Steven Parsons Astronomy & Astrophysics Group - University of Warwick - UK RAS Meeting London, January 11, 2013 Madelon Bours (Warwick) Monitoring eclipsing white dwarf binaries RAS Meeting 1 / 15
15
Embed
Monitoring orbital period variations in eclipsing … orbital period variations in eclipsing white dwarf binaries Madelon Bours Tom Marsh, Steven Parsons Astronomy & Astrophysics Group
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Monitoring orbital period variationsin eclipsing white dwarf binaries
Madelon BoursTom Marsh, Steven Parsons
Astronomy & Astrophysics Group - University of Warwick - UK
Combining precise ULTRACAM eclipse times with regular LT+RISEdata enables us to detect any period variations in a large number ofeclipsing white dwarf binaries.
Most of the well enough studied binaries show some sort of variationin their orbital periods.
If Applegate’s mechanism is the dominant cause we expect:
→ variations to correlate with companion’s spectral type→ variations to correlate with binary’s orbital period→ no variations in double white dwarf binaries
If circumbinary planets are the main cause we expect:
→ planetary fits to be able to predict future timings→ to find some systems without variations / planets→ planetary models to be dynamically stable