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An important publication about nova event in a CV

Posted: Wed May 22, 2019 4:22 pm
by Francois Teyssier
An interesting and important publication about the evolution of a cataclysmic variable throw a nova event

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019M ... S/abstract

with David Boyd as co-author

Abstract:

For the ordinary classical nova QZ Aurigae (which erupted in 1964), we report 1317 magnitudes from 1912-2016, including four eclipses detected on archival photographic plates from long before the eruption. We have accurate and robust measures of the orbital period both pre-eruption and post-eruption, and we find that the orbital period decreased, with a fractional change of -290.71±0.28 parts-per-million across the eruption, with the orbit necessarily getting smaller. Further, we find that the light curve outside of eclipses and eruption is flat at near B=17.14 from 1912-1981, whereupon the average light curve starts fading down to B=17.49 with large variability. QZ Aur is a robust counter-example against the Hibernation model for the evolution of cataclysmic variables, where the model requires that all novae have their period increase across eruptions. Large period decreases across eruptions can easily arise from mass imbalances in the ejecta, as are commonly seen in asymmetric nova shells.




Congratulations, David!

François

Re: An important publication about nova event in a CV

Posted: Wed May 22, 2019 9:43 pm
by Benjamin Mauclaire
Hello David,

Congratulation David to be 2nd author!
May you describe us how was this adventure, relationship with Schaefer and how you were envolved in this paper.

Benji

Re: An important publication about nova event in a CV

Posted: Thu May 23, 2019 6:57 pm
by David Boyd
Thanks Francois and Benji.

My involvement was in providing almost all the unpublished photometry of QZ Aur since 2011 used in the paper. This was entirely serendipitous as I did not know at the time I was making the observations that Brad was interested in this star. It is confirmation of the value of submitting your observations to a database so they might be discovered and used later. I made a number of comments on a draft of the paper, mainly around his interpretation of the O-C plot after the nova. He made some changes as a result. My other contribution to the paper was to tell him about the Shi & Qian paper which was not aware of. His conclusions are controversial and may result in some interesting responses.

My position in the author list is the good luck of having a surname beginning with B. As you can see all the coauthors after Brad are in alphabetic order.

David