Starship Asterisk*

A team of University of Notre Dame astrophysicists led by Peter Garnavich, professor of physics, has observed the unexplained fading of an interacting binary star, one of the first discoveries using the University’s Sarah L. Krizmanich Telescope.

The binary star, FO Aquarii, located in the Milky Way galaxy and Aquarius constellation about 500 light-years from Earth, consists of a white dwarf and a companion star donating gas to the compact dwarf, a type of binary system known as an intermediate polar. The system is bright enough to be observed with small telescopes. Garnavich and his team started studying FO Aquarii, known as “king of the intermediate polars,” a few years ago when NASA’s Kepler Telescope was pointed toward it for three months. The star rotates every 20 minutes, and Garnavich wanted to investigate whether the period was changing. ...

Intermediate polars are interesting binary systems because the low-density star drops gas toward the compact dwarf, which catches the matter using its strong magnetic field and funnels it to the surface, a process called accretion. The gas emits X-rays and optical light as it falls, and we see regular light variations as the stars orbit and spin. ...

• Astrophysical Journal 833(1):93 (10 Dec 2016) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/833/1/93
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1609.01026 > 05 Sep 2016 (v1), 10 Oct 2016 (v3)