The Quest for Identifying BY Draconis Stars within a Data Set of 3,548 Candidate Cepheid Variable Stars (Abstract)

Volume 44 number 1 (2016)

Jessica Johnson

1615 Stanley Street, New Britain, CT 06050; johnsonj@my.ccsu.edu

Abstract

(Abstract only) A spreadsheet of 3,548 automatically classified candidate Cepheid variable stars from the ASAS (All Sky Automated Survey) photometry data was provided to AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers) members for analysis. It was known that the computer filters had significantly overpopulated the list. Patrick Wils originally investigated a small subset of the data using 2MASS, PPMXL, and ROTSE data, and discovered that the vast majority of the 84 candidates he surveyed appeared to have been misidentified, demonstrating the need to reclassify these variables. The most common misidentification seemed to be of BY Draconis stars (K and M spotted dwarfs), which led to an ongoing project to systematically identify BY Draconis stars from this data set. The stars are sorted using the International Variable Star Index (VSX) information and ASAS light curves to search for prior reclassification by other authors in the time since the initial population of the candidate list (e.g. using ROTSE data), along with infrared photometry (2MASS) and proper motion (PPMXL) data. An analysis of light curves and phase plots using the AAVSO software vstar is the final step in identifying potential BY Draconis stars. The goal of this project has been to submit updated identifications for these stars to VSX. This final presentation on this project will identify the last set of reclassified BY Draconis stars and discuss future directions for this research.