The enigmatic WN8 stars: Intensive photometry of four southern stars on time scales from 30 min to 3 months

Details The enigmatic WN8 stars: Intensive photometry of four southern stars on time scales from 30 min to 3 months The enigmatic WN8 stars: Intensive photometry of four southern stars on time scales from 30 min to 3 months

Feb 1995

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1995aj....109..817a&link_type=abstract

Astronomical Journal (ISSN 0004-6256), vol. 109, no. 2, p. 817-834

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

41

Astronomical Photometry, Stellar Oscillations, Variable Stars, Visible Spectrum, Wolf-Rayet Stars, Stellar Winds, Variability, X Ray Binaries

Scientific paper

We present the first results of an extensive photometric study of the most intrinsically variable Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars: the WN8 subclass. Some 375 individual differential observations of WR16 and WR40 were obtained over a contiguous interval of approximately 3 months in a narrow visual continuum bandpass. Over the same interval, we obtained roughly 200 broadband V observations of the fainter WN8 stars WR66 and WR82. All four WN8 stars show significant random variability on time scales of hour to approximately a day -- probably related to the stochastic formation, propagation, and decay of emitting/scattering inhomogeneities in the winds. Unlike for WR66 and WR82, the photometric behavior of WR16 and WR40 is more deterministic with approximately two possible periods in the range approximately 2-30 days -- possibly related to some kind of Luminous Blue Variable (LBV), binary, or rotation phenomenon. In addition, WR82 shows a possible secular decline during the 3 months and WR66 reveals a clear periodicity of 3.51 h. This short period may be related to nonradial pulsations or a spiral-in binary process invoking a low-mass, compact companion as seen in the massive x-ray binary Cyg X-3, a WN7 + c system of period 4.8 h.

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