Re: GSC 540-84

[Michael Koppelman <lolife@bitstream.net>]

I have the Smith book and have been reading it extensively. One 
interesting tidbit is he states "In fact, it is not certain whether any 
RRc stars exhibit the classical Blazhko effect."

The consensus on this list (so far) was that this star is probably an 
RRc and it certainly looks like we are seeing the Blazhko effect. I'm 
going to see if I can get a rough idea of the period of the effect on 
this star using Fourier. I don't think Smith was saying that there 
would necessarily be anything unusual about seeing the Blazhko effect 
in an RRc star, only that the effect has been questioned for the fairly 
scarce RRc stars for which this effect has been claimed.

He also states the the shortest known Blazhko cycle is on the order of 
11 days. I have the feeling, judging from my data, that this one could 
be quite a bit smaller than that. We'll see I guess.

For reference:

http://www.lolife.com/astronomy/gsc540-84/gsc540-84_color_phase.jpg

Cheers,
Michael Koppelman


On Tuesday, September 9, 2003, at 11:19 AM, Arne Henden wrote:

> Yup, this is what happens with the Blazhko effect.  It acts like an
> amplitude modulation with period ~100x the basic pulsational period.
> It is not an overtone pulsation in the traditional sense.
> Look at Smith's book if you get a chance; the UM library should have
> a copy.