Proposal #114

Luminous Blue Variables (LBV) form a class of stars which has some of the most luminous stars and is characterized by eruptive processes that cause intense photometric and spectroscopic variability. Due to their rarity, the small number of studies and the high peculiarity of these stars, their evolutive context and physical properties are still under debate. However, they have attracted the attention of the scientific community, due to the possibility, recently discovered, that some of these objects may be supernova progenitors.

The photometric variability observed in these stars has an irregular behavior, being necessary the continuous monitoring for the detection of new eruptions. Some of these stars are already monitored by AAVSO, specially by Josch Hambsch using the ROAD (Remote Observatory on Atacama Desert), however, the number of objects covered by these observations is very small.

We propose the use of the BSM Berry and South (and possibly Argentina, after commissioning) telescopes to observe, in 9 fields, a total of 28 LBVs and candidates, in the range from V=9.0 to V=12.5, covering almost the entire sample of these stars in the Magellanic Clouds. This project can be considered as an update (and replacement) to the #84 proposal, which resulted into data published in my PhD Thesis[1] and also used in a paper in preparation for the Astronomy & Astrophysics. All observations will be taken with the same exposure time (number of exposures times individual exposure time), depending of the filter, as B=40x60s, V=20x60s, R=20x40s, I=20x60s, based on our previous experience with BSM telescopes, and they should be executed at least one time per week or more during a period of 5 years.

The photometric data reduction will be made by an automatic pipeline, based on ASTROPOP[2] package running at Observatório Nacional (Brazil). All the observations will be public available in AAVSO website and all VSX catalog stars present in the field, and with good SNR, will also be identified and reduced.

The fields will cover the following stars:

Field1 (R4) = RMC 4 + AzV 154
Field2 (R40) = HD 5980 + RMC 40
Field3 (R66) = RMC 66 + HD 269216
Field4 (R71) = RMC 71
Field5 (S22) = RMC 74 + LHA 120-S 22
Field6 (R81) = LHA 120-S 18 + RMC 78 + RMC 81
Field7 (R85) = RMC 84 + RMC 85 + S Dor
Field8 (R99) = RMC 99 + HD 269582 + RMC 110 + LHA 120-S 119 + RMC 116 + HD 269604
Field9 (R127) = RMC 123 + RMC 127 + RMC 128 + RMC 143 + RMC 149 + LHA 120-S 134 + MWC 126

The attached target list is organized in from of the center of field coordinates to get different stars, not pointing to any specific object.