We document the presence of a few Cepheid and RR Lyrae variable stars with previously unrecognized characteristics. These stars exhibit the property of a period ratio of main pulsation divided by secondary pulsation P1/P2 very close to sqrt(2). Other stars of these types have period ratios which do not show clustering with a close association and a single remarkable non-harmonic number. Close examination reveals a deviation of multiples of a few times ~0.06% for these stars. This deviation seems to be present in discrete steps on the order of ~0.000390(4), indicating the possible presence of a sort of fine structure in this oscillation.
The origin of the conspicuous amplitude and phase modulation of the RR Lyrae pulsation - known as the Blazhko effect - is still a mystery after more than 100 years of its discovery. With the help of the Kepler space telescope we have revealed a new and unexpected phenomenon: period doubling in RR Lyr - the eponym and prototype of its class - as well as in other Kepler Blazhko RR Lyrae stars. We have found that period doubling is directly connected to the Blazhko modulation. Furthermore, with hydrodynamic model calculations we have succeeded in reproducing the period doubling and proved that the root cause of this effect is a high order resonance (9:2) between the fundamental mode and the 9th radial overtone, which is a strange mode. We discuss the implications of these recent findings on our understanding of the century-old Blazhko problem.
We analysed 30 RR Lyrae stars (RRLs) located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) globular cluster Reticulum that were observed in the 3.6 and 4.5 $mu$m passbands with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on board of the Spitzer Space Telescope. We derived new mid-infrared (MIR) period-luminosity PL relations. The zero points of the PL relations were estimated using the trigonometric parallaxes of five bright Milky Way (MW) RRLs measured with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and, as an alternative, we used the trigonometric parallaxes published in the first Gaia data release (DR1) which were obtained as part of the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS) and the parallaxes of the same stars released with the second Gaia data release (DR2). We determined the distance to Reticulum using our new MIR PL relations and found that distances calibrated on the TGAS and DR2 parallaxes are in a good agreement and, generally, smaller than distances based on the HST parallaxes, although they are still consistent within the respective errors. We conclude that Reticulum is located ~3 kpc closer to us than the barycentre of the LMC.
Based on photometric data obtained between 1935 and 2017, $O-C$ diagrams were built for 22 RR Lyrae stars in the globular cluster NGC 6171, leading to the discovery of secular period changes in 4 variables for which we have calculated their period change rates $beta$. In contrast we find that $82%$ of the sample stars have stable periods over the last 82 years. For the stable period stars, the whole data base has been employed to refine their periods. Among the period changing stars, three (V10, V12 and V16) have decreasing periods larger than expected from stellar evolution. Despite these individual cases of significant period change rate, the golbal average of the measured period changes in the cluster is basically zero, in consonance with theoretical predictions for clusters with redder horizontal branches. The hitherto unpublished observations, now brought into public domain, are employed to calculate a set of times of maximum light which are used in the present analysis.
The period of pulsation and the structure of the light curve for Cepheid and RR Lyrae variables depend on the fundamental parameters of the star: mass, radius, luminosity, and effective temperature. Here we train artificial neural networks on theoretical pulsation models to predict the fundamental parameters of these stars based on their period and light curve structure. We find significant improvements to estimates of these parameters made using light curve structure and period over estimates made using only the period. Given that the models are able to reproduce most observables, we find that the fundamental parameters of these stars can be estimated up to 60% more accurately when light curve structure is taken into consideration. We quantify which aspects of light curve structure are most important in determining fundamental parameters, and find for example that the second Fourier amplitude component of RR Lyrae light curves is even more important than period in determining the effective temperature of the star. We apply this analysis to observations of hundreds Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud and thousands of RR Lyrae in the Magellanic Clouds and Galactic bulge to produce catalogs of estimated masses, radii, luminosities, and other parameters of these stars. As an example application, we estimate Wesenheit indices and use those to derive distance moduli to the Magellanic Clouds of $mu_{text{LMC},text{CEP}} = 18.688 pm 0.093$, $mu_{text{LMC},text{RRL}} = 18.52 pm 0.14$, and $mu_{text{SMC},text{RRL}} = 18.88 pm 0.17$ mag.
The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) is a great source of top-quality photometry of classical pulsators. Collection of variable stars from the fourth part of the project contains more than 38 000 RR Lyrae stars. These stars pulsate mostly in the radial fundamental mode (RRab), in radial first overtone (RRc) or in both modes simultaneously (RRd). Analysis of the OGLE data allowed to detect additional non-radial modes in RRc and in RRd stars. We have found more than 260 double-mode stars with characteristic period ratio of the additional (shorter) period to first overtone period around 0.61, increasing the number of known stars of this type by factor of 10. Stars from the OGLE sample form three nearly parallel sequences in the Petersen diagram. Some stars show more than one non-radial mode simultaneously. These modes belong to different sequences.