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Treasure Hunting in Photometric Seas: A Search for Eclipsing Binary Stars

Treasure Hunting in Photometric Seas: A Search for Eclipsing Binary Stars. A Thesis Presentation by Jonathan Devor (Harvard). February 27, 2008. Why Eclipsing Binaries?. Eclipsing binaries provide the most direct and accurate method of measuring both the masses and radii of stars.

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Treasure Hunting in Photometric Seas: A Search for Eclipsing Binary Stars

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  1. Treasure Hunting in Photometric Seas:ASearch for Eclipsing Binary Stars A Thesis Presentation by Jonathan Devor (Harvard) February 27, 2008

  2. Why Eclipsing Binaries? • Eclipsing binaries provide the most direct and accurate method of measuring both the masses and radii of stars. • We need to know both the masses and radii of stars to constrain their structure and to solve the ongoing discrepancy between theory and observations found in low-mass dwarfs.

  3. What are Eclipsing Binary Stars? EB = eclipsing binary LC = light curve Light curve Secondary eclipse Primary eclipse Out-of-eclipse “plateau” Animation from Wikipedia

  4. Eccentric orbit Circular and Eccentric Orbits Circular orbit a

  5. Outline • Where our data comes from- The OGLE II and TrES multi-epoch photometric surveys • How I analyzed the data- The automated DEBiL/MECI pipeline • Results- Discovery of low-mass eclipsing binaries Testing tidal circularization theory Finding “abnormal” eclipsing binaries • Future work

  6. Searching Through the OGLE II Bulge Fields (N = 218,699 LCs)

  7. Bohdan PaczynskiLyman Spitzer Jr. Professor of Astrophysics (Princeton) Feb 8, 1940 - Apr 19, 2007

  8. OGLE:The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment • Located at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile • 1.3m physical aperture • I-band photometric observations • Magnitude limit I < 19 • ~200 observations per LC, compiled over three years (1997-1999) • Analyzed 49 bulge fields, totaling 218,699 LCs Specs: The Warsaw Telescope Las Campanas Observatory, Chile OGLE website

  9. “It is a common situation nowadays that the ability to generate data far exceeds the ability to process it, and even more so, to comprehend it.” (Wozniak et al. 2002) Release all the data to the public Many discoveries, most of which had nothing to do with the original survey motivations (e.g. pulsating stars, transiting exoplanets, population statistics, irregular variables, eclipsing binaries, etc.)

  10. How to Find Eclipsing Binaries (Devor 2005)

  11. (Devor 2005)

  12. Fitting Eclipsing Binaries with DEBiL [Devor 2005, The Astrophysical Journal, 628, 411] DEBiL = Detached Eclipsing Binary Light curves A fully-automated program for fitting detached EBs. Solves for the geometry of the binary. Fitted parameters: • Fractional radii (rA,B), where rA.B = RA,B / a • Component magnitude (magA,B) • Orbital inclination (i) • Orbital eccentricity (e) • Epoch of perihelion (t0) • Argument of perihelion (ω)

  13. Binary Component HR-Diagram Primary components Secondary components (Devor 2005)

  14. Radius-Radius Diagram (Devor 2005) rA.B = RA,B / a

  15. Density-Color Diagram Calculating a binary’s “mean density”: (Devor 2005)

  16. The Orbital Period Distribution (Devor 2005)

  17. Finding Absolute Parameters Using the MECI Analysis

  18. MECI Maximum-Likelihood Analysis [J. Devor & D. Charbonneau 2006, The Astrophysical Journal, 653, 647] MECI = Method for Eclipse Component Identification A fully-automated program to fit the absolute parameters of an eclipsing binary using stellar isochrones tables. Fitted Parameters: • Binary component masses (MA,B) • Binary age

  19. (Devor & Charbonneau 2006)

  20. The MECI Flow-Chart (Devor & Charbonneau 2006) The Yonsei-Yale theoretical isochrones Log Luminosity Main-sequence (Yi et al. 2001) LogTemperature

  21. Testing MECI with Known Systems (Lacy et al. 2002) (Lacy et al. 2003) (Devor & Charbonneau 2006)

  22. Searching Through 10 Sleuth Fields (N = 185,445 LCs)

  23. TrES/Sleuth TrES = Trans-atlantic Exoplanet Survey Specs: • Sleuth is one of three robotic telescopes in the TrES network. • Located at Palomar Obs., CA • 10 cm physical aperture • 30“ photometric aperture radius • r - band photometric observations • Magnitude limit r < 15 • Effective 9-minute cadence (5 x 90sec) • ~2000 observations per LC • Analyzed 10 fields, totaling 185,445 LCs http://solas.dnsalias.org/~ftod//tres/sleuth.html Large field / bright targets  easier to follow-up

  24. A Catalog of 773 TrES Eclipsing Binaries [J. Devor, D. Charbonneau, F. T. O'Donovan, G. Mandushev, & G. Torres 2008, The Astronomical Journal, 135, 850] • 34 - EBs with eccentric orbits • 290 – Circular orbit • 103 – Circular/ambiguous • 23 – Inverted • 318 – Non-detached • 5 – “Abnormal” (+15 circular abnormals) (Devor et al. 2008)

  25. “Abnormal” Eclipsing Binaries P = 1.046 days P = 24.073 days P = 0.485 days P = 0.310 days P = 0.538 days (Devor et al. 2008)

  26. Binary Mass-Mass Plot (Devor et al. 2008)

  27. Tidal Circularization • First studied by (Darwin 1879) Eccentricity dissipates exponentially: exp(-t / tcirc) • Dynamical tides ; radiative dissipation for massive stars (Zahn 1975 ; Zahn 1977) • Equilibrium tides ; turbulent dissipation in low-mass stars (Zahn 1977 ; Hut 1981) • Hydrodynamics (Tassoul 1988) • Circularization during the Hayashi phase (Zahn & Bouchet 1989) • Theories systematically underestimate the circularization timescales of clusters, except for the Hyades (Meibom & Mathieu 2005)

  28. Tidal Circularization for Individual EBs (Zahn 1975, 1977) (Devor et al. 2008)

  29. Searching for Low-Mass Eclipsing Binaries Testing the Magnetic Disruption Hypothesis (Ribas 2006; Torres et al. 2006; López-Morales 2007; Chabrier et al. 2007)

  30. T-Lyr1-17236:A long-period low-mass EB [J. Devor, D. Charbonneau, G. Torres, C. H. Blake, R. White, M. Rabus, F. T. O'Donovan, G. Mandushev, G. Bakos, & A. Szentgyorgyi To be submitted to The Astrophysical Journal] (Devor et al., in prep.) P = 8.429441 ± 0.000033 days

  31. Determining the Radii (Devor et al., in prep.)

  32. Mass-Radius Relation (Baraffe et al. 1998) (Devor et al., in prep.)

  33. Future Work

  34. T-CrB0-10759 Equal eclipses 0.60 + 0.58 M (K7+K8)

  35. T-Cyg1-12664 Disparate eclipses 0.62 + 0.32 M (K6+M3)

  36. T-Tau0-04859 Disparate eclipses, yet similar masses Young system (?) 0.66 + 0.62 M (K5+K6)

  37. T-Tau0-07388 Disparate eclipses with O’Connell effect Young system (?) 0.65 + 0.47 M (K6+M1)

  38. T-Dra0-07116 Equal eclipses Uncertain masses (late K + late K) or (early M + early M)

  39. A Pulsating Eclipsing Binary: T-Cas0-07656 Probably one component δ-Scuti type variable Can be used to determine system parameters from two independent approaches Ideal test case for constraining theory of pulsating star mechanism

  40. A Binary with Large Eclipse Timing Variations C

  41. Conclusions • Photometric data is produced at a rate that far exceeds the ability to process it. This situation will become far more severe with the operation of Pan-STARRS and LSST. • Using the DEBiL/MECI automated pipeline I was able to determine population statistics and locate rare targets for follow-up. • Located over a dozen low-mass EBs, which are necessary for resolving the mass-radius relation discrepancy, and spectroscopically confirmed five of them. • One of these confirmed low-mass EBs, T-Lyr1-17236, has a period of 8.4 days, making it an ideal test-case for the magnetic disruption hypothesis. Though the derived uncertainties are large, this system is consistent with the hypothesis.

  42. TrES/PSST (LC) Lowell Obs., AZ TrES/Slueth (LC) Palomar Obs., CA NIRSPEC (RV) Mauna Kea, HI Georgi Mandushev Dave Charbonneau Francis O'Donovan Dave Charbonneau John Bailey Cullen Blake Dave Charbonneau Russel White HATNet (LC) Mauna Kea, HI & FLWO, AZ Gaspar Bakos TRES (RV) FLWO, AZ IAC80 (LC) Observatorio del Teide Canary Islands Gabor Furesz Doug Mink Andy Szentgyorgyi Bill Wyatt Markus Rabus MECI + DEBiL pipeline

  43. Acknowledgments I would like to thank… • Dave Charbonneau (CfA) • Willie Torres (CfA) • Tsevi Mazeh (TAU) • Laurent Eyer (Observatoire de Genève) • Przemek Wozniak (LANL) • Kris Stanek (Ohio State) • Avishai Dekel (HUJI) • Jean Collins • Peggy Herlihy Thank You!

  44. Questions

  45. Extra slides

  46. Summery- our pipeline: • Step 1: Step :Determine the period. • Step 2: If a distinct secondary eclipse is not observed, add an entry with twice the period. • Step 3: Fit the orbital parameters with DEBiL. • Step 4: Fine-tune the period using eclipse timing. • Step 5: Refine the orbital parameters with DEBiL using the revised period. • Step 6: Remove contaminated LCs. • Step 7: Visually assess the quality of the EB models. • Step 8: Match the LC sources with external databases. • Step 9: Estimate the absolute physical properties of the binary components using MECI. • Step 10: Classify the resulting systems using both automatic and manual criteria.

  47. The Wilson Method

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