J/ApJ/812/133 1889-2015 photometry of Stingray nebula (Schaefer+, 2015)
Photometry of the Stingray nebula (V839 Ara) from 1889 to 2015 across the
ionization of its planetary nebula.
Schaefer B.E., Edwards Z.I.
<Astrophys. J., 812, 133 (2015)>
=2015ApJ...812..133S 2015ApJ...812..133S (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Photometry, UBVRI ; Planetary nebulae
Keywords: planetary nebulae: general;
planetary nebulae: individual: Stingray Nebula;
stars: AGB and post-AGB; stars: individual: V839 Ara
Abstract:
Up until around 1980, the Stingray was an ordinary B1 post-AGB star,
but then it suddenly sprouted bright emission lines like in a
planetary nebula (PN), and soon after this the Hubble Space Telescope
(HST) discovered a small PN around the star, so apparently we have
caught a star in the act of ionizing a PN. We report here on a
well-sampled light curve from 1889 to 2015, with unique coverage of
the prior century plus the entire duration of the PN formation plus
three decades of its aftermath. Surprisingly, the star anticipated the
1980s ionization event by declining from B=10.30 in 1889 to B=10.76 in
1980. Starting in 1980, the central star faded fast, at a rate of
0.20mag/yr, reaching B=14.64 in 1996. This fast fading is apparently
caused by the central star shrinking in size. From 1994 to 2015, the
V-band light curve is almost entirely from the flux of two bright
[OIII] emission lines from the unresolved nebula, and it shows a
consistent decline at a rate of 0.090mag/yr. This steady fading (also
seen in the radio and infrared) has a timescale equal to that expected
for ordinary recombination within the nebula, immediately after a
short-duration ionizing event in the 1980s. We are providing the first
direct measure of the rapidly changing luminosity of the central star
on both sides of a presumed thermal pulse in 1980, with this providing
a strong and critical set of constraints, and these are found to
sharply disagree with theoretical models of PN evolution.
Description:
To get broad-band magnitudes for the Stingray, we have pulled from a
wide variety of sources --the Harvard photographic plate collection
from 1889 to 1989, the visual magnitude estimates of Albert Jones as
archived by the American Association of Variable Star Observers
(AAVSO) from 1994 to 2007, the All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) from
2001 to 2009, the AAVSO telescopes going into the AAVSO Photometric
All-sky Survey (APASS) from 2011 to 2015, plus our own photometry from
CCD images with DECam on the Cerro Tololo 4-m Blanco telescope from
2014. We have added 15 mag from the literature or derived by us from
the literature, all on six nights from 1969 to 1996.
At our request, A. Henden has put the Stingray in the queue for time
series photometry on the 0.61-m Optical Craftsmen Telescope at the
Mount John Observatory in New Zealand. The 1-minute CCD integrations
were through a Johnson V filter on the nights of 2015 March 23, 26,
and 27.
Objects:
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RA (ICRS) DE Designation(s)
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17 16 21.08 -59 29 23.3 Stingray nebula = V* V839 Ara
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File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
table2.dat 56 1040 Stingray light curve 1889-2014
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See also:
B/vsx : AAVSO International Variable Star Index VSX (Watson+, 2006-2014)
B/gcvs : General Catalogue of Variable Stars (Samus+ 2007-2013)
II/336 : AAVSO Photometric All Sky Survey (APASS) DR9 (Henden+, 2016)
II/297 : AKARI/IRC mid-IR all-sky Survey (ISAS/JAXA, 2010)
II/264 : ASAS Variable Stars in Southern hemisphere (Pojmanski+, 2002-2005)
II/246 : 2MASS All-Sky Catalog of Point Sources (Cutri+ 2003)
V/15 : SAO and Supplementary Data (Ochsenbein 1980)
J/MNRAS/431/2 : Hα fluxes of Galactic planetary nebulae (Frew+, 2013)
J/A+A/514/A3 : Star-galaxy separation in AKARI FIS Survey (Pollo+, 2010)
J/A+A/469/1221 : Sydney observatory Galactic survey (SOGS) (Fresneau+, 2007)
J/MNRAS/349/793 : Galactic PNe abundances (Perinotto+, 2004)
J/AcA/50/177 : All Sky Automated Survey Catalog (Pojmanski+, 2000)
J/A+AS/132/13 : Planetary nebulae radial velocities (Durand+ 1998)
J/A+AS/126/479 : NIR photometry of IRAS sources. III (Garcia-Lario+, 1997)
J/PASP/107/846 : LSE stars, extension of Case-Hamburg surveys. (Drilling+ 1995)
J/A+A/299/755 : Stellar evolution. II. Post-AGB (Bloecker+, 1995)
J/A+AS/104/315 : Member of Herbig Ae/Be stellar group (The+ 1994)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table2.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 12 F12.4 d JD Julian date of observation
14- 21 F8.3 yr Obs.Y Year of observation
23- 24 A2 --- Band Band (UBVg'r'i')
26- 30 F5.2 mag mag [9.8/15.4] Magnitude in Band
32- 35 F4.2 mag e_mag [0.01/0.3] Uncertainty in mag
37- 56 A20 --- r_mag Source of mag (1)
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Note (1): Source of mag as follows:
HCO = Harvard photographic plate collection. Plate ID in parantheses.
Kozok = Kozok (1985A&AS...61..387K 1985A&AS...61..387K);
Jones = Visual magnitude estimate of Albert Jones as archived
by the AAVSO;
ASAS = All Sky Automated Survey (see Pojmanski+, 2000, J/AcA/50/177)
APASS = AAVSO Photometric All-Sky Survey (II/336);
Hill = Hill et al. (1974MNRAS.168..451H 1974MNRAS.168..451H);
Bobrowski = Bobrowski et al. (1998Natur.392..469B 1998Natur.392..469B);
Reindl = Reindl et al. (2014A&A...565A..40R 2014A&A...565A..40R);
DECam = Our own photometry from CCD images with DECam on the
Cerro Tololo 4-m Blanco telescope;
Mount John = The 0.61-meter Optical Craftsmen Telescope at the
Mount John Observatory in New Zealand.
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 05-Feb-2016