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Register a new userBlue and IR Light Curves of the Mysterious Pre-Main Sequence Star V582 Mon (KH 15D) from 1955 to 1970
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Added by
Stefano Ciprini Dr.
Publication date
2004
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
Authors
Paolo Maffei
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In recent years, an increasing number of publications have been addressed to the peculiar and mysterious pre-main sequence star V582 Mon, also known as KH 15D. This extraordinary T Tauri star, located in the young star cluster NGC 2264, appears as to be an eclipsing variable. In the present paper, we report a unique and self-consistent set of light curves in the blue and near-infrared bands, spanning a 15-year interval (epoch 1955-1970). Our photometric data show clearly the beginning of the eclipse stage occurred in early 1958 in the blue, and perhaps around four years later in the infrared. The light curve period turns out to be the same reported by recent observations (about 48.3 days), so that no evidence for a period change results. On the other hand, in our data the light curve shape appears as sinusoidal and is therefore different from the one displayed today. The photometric behaviour, determined with time-series and colour-index analysis, suggests that V582 Mon (KH 15D) could be initially surrounded by an accretion disk/torus seen edge-on, with subsequent thin dust formation at the beginning of the blue radiation absorption. The dust could then aggregate into larger particles providing the transition between selective and total absorption, accompanied with eclipsing variability in the infrared. The minima of the periodic light curve become deeper due to the increasing dimension and number of dust grains, and then flattens due to a contraction in the disk.
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We examine the light and color evolution of the T Tauri binary KH 15D through photometry obtained at wavelengths between 0.55 and 8.0 $mu$m. The data were collected with ANDICAM on the 1.3 m SMARTS telescope at Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory and with IRAC on the Spitzer Space Telescope. We show that the systems circumbinary ring, which acts as a screen that covers and uncovers different portions of the binary orbit as the ring precesses, has reached an orientation where the brighter component (star B) fully or nearly fully emerges during each orbital cycle. The fainter component (star A) remains fully occulted by the screen at all phases. The leading and trailing edges of the screen move across the sky at the same rate of $sim$15 meters per second, consistent with expectation for a ring with a radius and width of $sim$4 AU and a precession period of $sim$6500 years. Light and color variations continue to indicate that the screen is sharp edged and opaque at emph{VRIJH} wavelengths. However, we find an increasing transparency of the ring edge at 2.2, 3.6, and 4.5 $mu$m. Reddening seen at the beginning of the eclipse that occurred during the CSI 2264 campaign particularly suggests selective extinction by a population of large dust grains. Meanwhile, the gradual bluing observed while star B is setting is indicative of forward scattering effects at the edge of the ring. The SED of the system at its bright phase shows no evidence of infrared excess emission that can be attributed to radiation from the ring or other dust component out to 8 microns.
An extensive photometric monitoring of KH 15D, an enigmatic variable in the young star cluster NGC 2264, has been conducted. Simultaneous and accurate near-infrared (JHKs-bands) photometry is presented between 2003 December and 2005 March covering most of the variable phase. The infrared variability is characterized by large-amplitude and long-lasting eclipse, as observed at optical. The period of variability is 48.3 +/- 0.2 days, the maximum photometric amplitude of variability is ~4.2 mag, and the eclipse duration is ~0.5 in phase units. These are consistent with the most recent period, amplitude, and duration at optical. The blueing of the J-H color (~0.16 mag) during the eclipse, which has been suggested before, is unambiguously confirmed; a similar blueing at H-Ks is less clear but is probably present at a similar level. The overall shape of the JHKs light curves is very similar to the optical one, including a fair time-symmetry and a less stable flux during the eclipse with a slight hump near the zero phase. Most of these variability features of KH 15D observed at near-infrared wavelengths can be explained with the recent model employing an eclipse by the inclined, precessing disk and an outer scattering region around a pre-main-sequence binary.
We report on Gemini/GNIRS observations of the binary T Tauri system V582 Mon (KH 15D) at three orbital phases. These spectra allow us to untangle five components of the system: the photosphere and magnetosphere of star B, the jet, scattering properties of the ring material, and excess near-IR radiation previously attributed to a possible self-luminous planet. We confirm an early-K subgiant classification for star B and show that the magnetospheric He I emission line is variable, possibly indicating increased mass accretion at certain times. As expected, the H$_2$ emission features associated with the inner part of the jet show no variation with orbital phase. We show that the reflectance spectrum for the scattered light has a distinctive blue slope and spectral features consistent with scattering and absorption by a mixture of water and methane ice grains in the 1-50 $mu$m size range. This suggests that the methane frost line is closer than $sim$5 AU in this system, requiring that the grains be shielded from direct radiation. After correcting for features from the scattered light, jet, magnetosphere, and photosphere, we confirm the presence of leftover near-IR light from an additional source, detectable near minimum brightness. A spectral emission feature matching the model spectrum of a 10 M$_{J}$, 1 Myr old planet is found in the excess flux, but other expected features from this model are not seen. Our observations, therefore, tentatively support the picture that a luminous planet is present within the system, although they cannot yet be considered definitive.
We present high resolution (R=50,000) spectra at 2.2 um of 16 young stars in the rho Ophiuchi dark cloud. Photospheric features are detected in the spectra of 11 of these sources, all Class II young stellar objects. In 10 of these sources, we measure effective temperatures, continuum veiling, and vsini rotation from the shapes and strengths of atomic photospheric lines by comparing to spectral synthesis models at 2.2 um. We measure surface gravities in 2 stars from the integrated line flux ratio of the 12CO line region at 2.3 um and the Na I line region at 2.2 um. Although the majority (8/10) of the Class II stars have similar effective temperatures (3530 K +/-100 K), they exhibit a large spread in bolometric luminosities (factor ~8), as derived from near-IR photometry. In the two stars where we have surface gravity measurements from spectroscopy, the photometrically derived luminosities are systematically higher than the spectroscopic luminosities. Our spectroscopic luminosities result in older ages on the H-R diagram than is suggested by photometry at J or K. Most of our sources show a substantially larger amount of continuum excess than stellar flux at 2.2 um. The derived veiling values at K appear correlated with mid-IR disk luminosity, and with Brackett gamma equivalent width, corrected for veiling. The derived vsini rotation is substantial (12-39 km s-1), but systematically less than the rotation measured in Class I.5 (flat) and Class I sources from other studies in Ophiuchus.
Pre-main sequence (PMS) stars evolve into main sequence (MS) phase over a period of time. Interestingly, we found a scarcity of studies in existing literature that examines and attempts to better understand the stars in PMS to MS transition phase. The purpose of the present study is to detect such rare stars, which we named as Transition Phase (TP) candidates - stars evolving from the PMS to the MS phase. We identified 98 TP candidates using photometric analysis of a sample of 2167 classical Be (CBe) and 225 Herbig Ae/Be (HAeBe) stars. This identification is done by analyzing the near- and mid-infrared excess and their location in the optical color-magnitude diagram. The age and mass of 58 of these TP candidates are determined to be between 0.1-5 Myr and 2-10.5 M$_odot$, respectively. The TP candidates are found to possess rotational velocity and color excess values in between CBe and HAeBe stars, which is reconfirmed by generating a set of synthetic samples using the machine learning approach.
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