Orbital periods of novae before eruption.
Abstract
The collection of archival plates at Harvard College Observatory was used to search for the eclipse periods of two novae (BT Mon and DQ Her) both before and after the outburst. The eclipse period of BT Mon is manifest in the data both before and after its 1939 eruption. The pre-eruption eclipse period is 0.3338010 d, which is 40 parts per million shorter than the modern period. With reasonable assumptions concerning the angular momentum carried off by the ejected material, this provides a dynamical measure of the mass of the ejecta, which is estimated to be 0.00003 solar mass. It is found that the specific angular momentum of the shell around BT Mon cannot be greatly in excess of the specific orbital angular momentum of the white dwarf. Analysis of all available data fails to specify the pre-eruption eclipse period of DQ Her, presumably because the light curve is badly smeared by the long photographic exposure times.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- May 1983
- DOI:
- 10.1086/160992
- Bibcode:
- 1983ApJ...268..710S
- Keywords:
-
- Angular Momentum;
- Eclipsing Binary Stars;
- Light Curve;
- Novae;
- Stellar Mass Ejection;
- Astronomical Photography;
- Stellar Envelopes;
- Stellar Magnitude;
- White Dwarf Stars;
- Astrophysics