Start Date
2023
Description
Many stars have companions orbiting so closely that they share a common atmosphere: contact binary stars (see Figure 1). High and low mass systems differ significantly in key observable properties such as mass ratio. In the accompanying poster (Carr et al. 2023), we show that considerations of dynamic and thermal stability prohibit nearly equal masses for low mass (sun-like) systems, but not for high mass systems. Menon et al. (2021) recently published models of the behavior of massive systems under the approximation that the internal structures of the stars are not affected by their being in contact. A key observable of these models is the rate of orbital period change at different stages of their life. The goal of this work was to test those model predictions. We determined derivatives by (1) gathering published data sets over as wide of a time baseline as possible and (2) analyzing them with an efficient algorithm that minimizes the number of degrees of freedom.
Recommended Citation
Phippen, Henry; Carr, Levi; and Molnar, Larry A., "Probing Massive Contact Binary Star Evolution Via Measurements of Orbital Period Changes" (2023). Summer Research. 37.
https://digitalcommons.calvin.edu/summer_research/2023/Posters/37
Included in
Cosmology, Relativity, and Gravity Commons, Stars, Interstellar Medium and the Galaxy Commons
Probing Massive Contact Binary Star Evolution Via Measurements of Orbital Period Changes
Many stars have companions orbiting so closely that they share a common atmosphere: contact binary stars (see Figure 1). High and low mass systems differ significantly in key observable properties such as mass ratio. In the accompanying poster (Carr et al. 2023), we show that considerations of dynamic and thermal stability prohibit nearly equal masses for low mass (sun-like) systems, but not for high mass systems. Menon et al. (2021) recently published models of the behavior of massive systems under the approximation that the internal structures of the stars are not affected by their being in contact. A key observable of these models is the rate of orbital period change at different stages of their life. The goal of this work was to test those model predictions. We determined derivatives by (1) gathering published data sets over as wide of a time baseline as possible and (2) analyzing them with an efficient algorithm that minimizes the number of degrees of freedom.