Browsing by Author "Herbst, William"

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    COMPLEX VARIABILITY OF THE Hα EMISSION LINE PROFILE OF THE T TAURI BINARY SYSTEM KH 15D: THE INFLUENCE OF ORBITAL PHASE, OCCULTATION BY THE CIRCUMBINARY DISK, AND ACCRETION PHENOMENA
    (The American Astronomical Society, 2012) Hamilton, Catrina M.; Johns-Krull, Christopher M.; Mundt, Reinhard; Herbst, William; Winn, Joshua A.
    We have obtained 48 high-resolution echelle spectra of the pre-main-sequence eclipsing binary system KH 15D (V582 Mon, P = 48.37 days, e ∼ 0.6, MA = 0.6M , MB = 0.7M ). The eclipses are caused by a circumbinary disk (CBD) seen nearly edge on, which at the epoch of these observations completely obscured the orbit of star B and a large portion of the orbit of star A. The spectra were obtained over five contiguous observing seasons from 2001/2002 to 2005/2006 while star A was fully visible, fully occulted, and during several ingress and egress events. The Hα line profile shows dramatic changes in these time series data over timescales ranging from days to years. A fraction of the variations are due to “edge effects” and depend only on the height of star A above or below the razor sharp edge of the occulting disk. Other observed variations depend on the orbital phase: the Hα emission line profile changes from an inverse P-Cygni-type profile during ingress to an enhanced double-peaked profile, with both a blue and a red emission component, during egress. Each of these interpreted variations are complicated by the fact that there is also a chaotic, irregular component present in these profiles. We find that the complex data set can be largely understood in the context of accretion onto the stars from a CBD with gas flows as predicted by the models of eccentric T Tauri binaries put forward by Artymowicz & Lubow, G¨unther & Kley, and de Val-Borro et al. In particular, our data provide strong support for the pulsed accretion phenomenon, in which enhanced accretion occurs during and after perihelion passage.
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    Seeing Through the Ring: Near-Infrared Photometry of V582 Mon (KH 15D)
    (IOP Publishing, 2016) Arulanantham, Nicole A.; Herbst, William; Cody, Ann Marie; Stauffer, John R.; Rebull, Luisa M.; Agol, Eric; Windemuth, Diana; Marengo, Massimo; Winn, Joshua N.; Hamilton, Catrina M.; Mundt, Reinhard; Johns-Krull, Christopher M.; Gutermuth, Robert A.
    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 μm. The data were collected with A Novel Dual Imaging CAMera (ANDICAM) on the 1.3 m SMARTS telescope at Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory and with InfraRed Array Camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope. We show that the system's 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 ~15 m s−1, consistent with expectation for a ring with a radius and width of ~4 au and a precession period of ~6500 years. Light and color variations continue to indicate that the screen is sharp edged and opaque at VRIJH wavelengths. However, we find an increasing transparency of the ring edge at 2.2, 3.6, and 4.5 μm. 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 spectral energy distribution 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 μm.