Bibcode
Torres, Manuel; Gaensicke, Boris; Rodriguez-Gil, Pablo; Long, Knox; Marsh, Tom; Steeghs, Danny; Munoz-Darias, Teodoro; Shahbaz, Tariq; Schmidtobreick, Linda; Schreiber, Matthias
Referencia bibliográfica
NOAO Proposal ID #2009A-0061
Fecha de publicación:
2
2009
Número de citas
0
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
SW Sextantis stars are a relatively large group of cataclysmic variables
(CVs) which plays a fundamental role in our understanding of CV
structure and evolution. Very little is known about the properties of
their accreting white dwarfs and their donor stars, as the stellar
components are usually outshone by an extremely bright accretion flow.
Consequently, a proper assesment of their evolutionary state is
illusionary. We are monitoring the brightness of a number of SW Sex
stars and request here Gemini/GMOS-N ToO time to obtain orbital
phase-resolved spectroscopy if one of them enters a low state, since
this is the only opportunity for studying the stellar components
individually. These data will be used to accurately measure the binary
parameters, white dwarf temperature, and distance to the system for a SW
Sex star for the first time. The measured stellar masses and radii will
especially be a precious input to the theory of compact binary evolution
as a whole.