The recurrent nova RS Oph - simultaneous B and V band observations of the flickering variability

Bibliographic Details
Title: The recurrent nova RS Oph - simultaneous B and V band observations of the flickering variability
Authors: Zamanov, R. K., Boeva, S., Latev, G. Y., Marti, J., Boneva, D., Spassov, B., Nikolov, Y., Bode, M. F., Tsvetkova, S. V., Stoyanov, K. A.
Publication Year: 2018
Collection: Astrophysics
Subject Terms: Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
More Details: We performed 48.6 hours (in 28 nights) of simultaneous B and V band observations of the flickering variability of the recurrent nova RS Oph in quiescence. During the time of our observations the brightness of the system varied between 13.2 > B > 11.1 and the colour in the range 0.86 < B-V < 1.33 . We find that RS~Oph becomes more blue, as it becomes brighter, however the hot component becomes more red as it becomes brighter (assuming that the red giant is non-variable). During all the runs RS Oph exhibits flickering with amplitude 0.16 - 0.59 mag in B band. For the flickering source we find that it has colour -0.14 < B-V < 0.40, temperature in the range 7200 < T_fl < 18900, and average radius 1.1 < R_fl < 6.7 R_sun. We do not find a correlation between the temperature of the flickering and the brightness. However, we do find a strong correlation (correlation coefficient 0.81, significance 1.1x10^{-7} ) between B band magnitude and the average radius of the flickering source - as the brightness of the system increases the size of the flickering source also increases. The estimated temperature is similar to that of the bright spot of cataclysmic variables. The persistent presence of flickering indicates that the white dwarf is actively accreting material for the next outburst.
Comment: 10 pages, accepted in MNRAS
Document Type: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty1816
Access URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/1807.01555
Accession Number: edsarx.1807.01555
Database: arXiv
More Details
DOI:10.1093/mnras/sty1816