AR Scorpii: a Remarkable Highly Variable Star Discovered by Amateur Astronomers (Abstract)

Volume 46 number 2 (2018)

Thomas Marsh

Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom; t.r.marsh@warwick.ac.uk

Abstract

(Abstract only) In May 2015, a group of amateur astronomers contacted Boris Gaensicke at Warwick regarding a puzzling star that they had been observing. This star, AR Sco, has turned out to be one of the most remarkable objects in the sky, unique for astonishingly strong pulsations every two minutes, and for radiating power across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio to X-ray wavelengths. I will describe what we think AR Sco is, how we arrived at this picture, and the extremely puzzling problems that it continues to pose.