We report the discovery of a new catacysmic variable system, RXJ051541+0104.6. The optical spectrum has a blue continuum with superposed H~I and He~I and II emission lines. The soft X-ray spectrum is well fit with a 50~eV black body. The X-ray and optical data are suggestive of an AM~Herculis system. The X-ray light curve shows extreme variability on timescales of seconds, and suggests an orbital period of order 8~hours, nearly twice that of the longest catalogued AM~Her period. When bright, the X-ray light curve breaks up into a series of discrete bursts, which may be due to accretion of dense blobs of material of about 1017~gm mass.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9408091,
title = {The Long Period AM Her-like Cataclysmic Variable RXJ051541+0104.6},
author = {F. M. Walter and S. J. Wolk and N. R. Adams},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9408091},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Accepted by ApJ. 23 pages. AAS/WGAS LaTeX. 9 figures available via anonymous FTP from sbast3.ess.sunysb.edu in /pub/fred/fig_*.ps