Cataclysmic Variables in the Backyard (Abstract)

Volume 40 number 1 (2012)

Joseph Patterson

Columbia University, Department of Astronomy, 538 W. 120th Street, New York, NY 10027; jop@astro.columbia.edu

Abstract

(Abstract only) The last decade has seen plummeting prices and significant advances in CCD-camera and smart-telescope technology, reaching all the way to the humblest of telescopes. There are now thousands of well-equipped amateur astronomers interested in using their telescopes for research, and many hundreds already doing so in coordinated campaigns. Variable star science has benefited tremendously. Since it’s always dark and always clear somewhere, coordinated photometry can accumulate nearly 24-hour coverage—and since the observers own their telescopes, very long campaigns are feasible, with little worry about weather. I’ll describe one network of observers, the Center for Backyard Astrophysics (CBA). The telescope apertures are 20–50 cm, enabling good signal-to-noise and time resolution down to V=18. We organize campaigns of time-series photometry of cataclysmic variables (novae, dwarf novae, magnetic variables, some X-ray binaries)—and routinely achieve thousand-hour campaigns with no significant aliasing, since the telescopes are distributed around the world. This enables sensitive searches for periodic signals, extending even to long time scales (months). We now produce most of the world’s supply of accretion-disk precession periods, and keep close watch on all the other clocks in cataclysmic variables (orbit, white-dwarf rotation and pulsation, and quasiperiodic oscillations).