No Arabic abstract
Z Camelopardalis (Z Cam) stars are a subset of dwarf novae distinguished by the occurrence of standstills, periods of relative constant brightness one to one and a half magnitudes fainter than maximum brightness. As part of an ongoing observing campaign, the Z CamPaign, the authors focused attention on several Z Cam suspects in the southern hemisphere. Two stars, BP Coronae Australis and ST Chamaeleontis were found to exhibit standstill behavior in 2013, thus confirming them as Z Cam type systems. This adds two more bona fide members to the 19 confirmed Z Cams, bringing the total to 21.
I found that V507 Cyg, IM Eri and FY Vul are Z Cam-type dwarf novae and they showed sequences of standstill terminated by brightening, in contrast to fading in ordinary Z Cam stars, followed by damping oscillation. These sequences are characteristic to IW And-type objects (also known as anomalous Z Cam stars). New additions to the IW And-type objects suggests that the IW And-type phenomenon is more prevalent among Z Cam stars. I suspect that the regularity of the pattern of the IW And-type phenomenon suggests a previously unknown type of limit-cycle oscillation, and I suggest that the standstill in these objects is somehow maintained in the inner part of the disk and the thermal instability starting from the outer part of the disk terminates the standstill to complete the cycle.
Long term optical monitoring of the dwarf nova OQ Car has been conducted to study the previously unknown behaviour of this star system. The observations have shown OQ Car to have frequent dwarf nova outbursts and revealed the first recorded standstill of this star system. Based on this, we conclude that OQ Car is a new member of the Z Cam type dwarf novae.
Photometry of Leo5 = 1H 1025+220 show that it is a dwarf nova of the Z Cam subtype. Two long standstills have been observed in the last five years.
Z Cam stars are a small subset of dwarf novae that exhibit standstills in their light curves. Most modern literature and catalogs of cataclysmic variables quote the number of known Z Cams to be on the order of 30 or so systems. After a four-year observing campaign and an exhaustive examination of the data in the AAVSO International Database we have trimmed that number by a third. One of the reasons for the misclassification of some systems is the fact that the definition of what a Z Cam is has changed over the last 85 years to what it is today. This has caused many stars formerly assumed to be Z Cams or rumored to be Z Cams to be eliminated from the final list. In this paper we present the results of our investigation into 65 stars listed at one time or another in the literature as Z Cams or possible Z Cams.
The unprecedented sky coverage and observing cadence of the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) has resulted in the discovery and continued monitoring of a large sample of Galactic transients. The vast majority of these are accretion-powered dwarf nova outbursts in cataclysmic variable systems, but a small subset are thermonuclear-powered classical novae. Despite improved monitoring of the Galaxy for novae from ASAS-SN and other surveys, the observed Galactic nova rate is still lower than predictions. One way classical novae could be missed is if they are confused with the much larger population of dwarf novae. Here, we examine the properties of 1617 dwarf nova outbursts detected by ASAS-SN and compare them to classical novae. We find that the mean classical nova brightens by ~11 magnitudes during outburst, while the mean dwarf nova brightens by only ~5 magnitudes, with the outburst amplitude distributions overlapping by roughly 15%. For the first time, we show that the amplitude of an outburst and the time it takes to decline by two magnitudes from maximum are positively correlated for dwarf nova outbursts. For classical novae, we find that these quantities are negatively correlated, but only weakly, compared to the strong anti-correlation of these quantities found in some previous work. We show that, even if located at large distances, only a small number of putative dwarf novae could be mis-classified classical novae suggesting that there is minimal confusion between these populations. Future spectroscopic follow-up of these candidates can show whether any are indeed classical novae.