Transient Pulsation of Sirius (Abstract)

Volume 43 number 1 (2015)

Kangujam Yugindro Singh

Department of Physics, Manipur University, Canchipur, Imphal West District, 795003, India; yugindro361@gmail.com

Irom Ablu Meitei

Address correspondence to K. Y. Singh, Department of Physics, Manipur University, Canchipur, Imphal West District, 795003, India; yugindro361@gmail.com

Abstract

(Abstract only) A photometric study of Sirius during the last week of January 2014 has revealed that the star shows transient pulsation. Observations of Sirius were taken with an integration period of ten seconds in B and V bands using a SSP3 photometer attached to a Celestron CGE1400 telescope. During the observations taken on the night of 30 January, 2014, the B-band magnitude remained almost unchanged; the difference in the maximum and minimum magnitude in B-band was 0.13. However, it was found that the V-band magnitude changed appreciably, decreasing by values up to more than 4. The pulsation in the V-band was so rapid that the V-band magnitude changed sometimes by more than 4 magnitudes in a short period of 10 seconds. Such a transient change in the properties of Sirius cannot be accounted for by the eclipsing binary phenomenon. Disruptive binary interactions such as mass transfer between Sirius A and B might account for such a powerful transient phenomenon.