Gearing Up for Epsilon Aurigae's First Eclipse of the Millennium
Abstract
The mysterious 3rd magnitude long period eclipsing binary star system epsilon Aurigae is predicted to be starting its 2 year eclipse in the late summer of 2009. While this is when the real excitement starts, much is to be learned before first contact. This paper discusses current observational results that have accumulated thus far, using photometric monitoring, H-alpha spectroscopy and with other data sources. Key among the findings are that (1) the low amplitude light variation quasi-period has decreased significantly over the past 20 years, and (2) that the duration of egress, eclipse-to-eclipse has been decreasing, while the duration of total eclipse has been increasing. The website for the observing campaign is: www.du.edu/~rstencel/epsaur.htm .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0807.2855,
title = {Gearing Up for Epsilon Aurigae's First Eclipse of the Millennium},
author = {J. L. Hopkins and L. Schanne and R. E. Stencel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.2855},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
Comments: 10 pages, PDF. See also Proceedings of the May 2008 Society for Astronomical Sciences annual symposium