Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21934821s&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #348.21
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The recurrent nova T Pyx erupted on 14 April 2011, its sixth known eruption. As part of an intensive campaign organized by the AAVSO, T Pyx now has 100,000 points in its eruption light curve. The coverage for T Pyx exceeds by far the second place (36,776 magnitudes for U Sco in 2010) and the third place ( 3000 magnitudes for RS Oph in 2006) nova light curves. (1) T Pyx underwent a mysterious pre-eruption rise 11 days before the start of the fast rising thermonuclear explosion, brightening to 1.1 mag above the quiescent level, then returning towards quiescence before the start of the eruption. (2) T Pyx is the first-ever nova that has been followed from the start of the fast rise, and in this case with fast times series and multicolor photometry. For the first 2.0 days, the light curve is well fit by a uniformly expanding shell model, only to then suffer a slight decline in brightness. (3) The pre-eruption orbital period was measured just 40 days prior to the eruption to be 0.07622916+-0.00000008 days. (4) The eruption light curve up to 120 days after the start of the eruption was virtually identical with the light curves from all prior eruptions. But starting at day 125, the light curve has continued declining slowly, rather than the sudden sharp drop by two magnitudes as was seen in the 1967 light curve. (5) The surprisingly short interval between the 1967 and 2011 eruptions is now no longer surprising with the realization that the accretion rate is proportional to the blue flux, so the drop in the average accretion rate from 1944-1967 (22 years) to 1967-2011 (44.33 year) by a factor of two implies an eruption date of 1967+2X22 = 2011.
Supported by the National Science Foundation (AST-1109420).
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