* Astronomy

Title: WZ Cygni: a Marginal Contact Binary in a Triple System?
Authors: Jae Woo Lee, Seung-Lee Kim, Chung-Uk Lee, Ho-Il Kim, Jang-Ho Park, Tobias Cornelius Hinse

We present new multiband CCD photometry for WZ Cyg made on 22 nights in two observing seasons of 2007 and 2008. Our light-curve synthesis indicates that the system is in poor thermal contact with a fill-out factor of 4.8% and a temperature difference of 1447 K. Including our 40 timing measurements, a total of 371 times of minimum light spanning more than 112 yr were used for a period study. Detailed analysis of the O--C diagram showed that the orbital period has varied by a combination with an upward parabola and a sinusoid. The upward parabola means the continuous period increase and indicates that some stellar masses are thermally transferred from the less to the more massive primary star at a rate of about 5.80 x 10^{-8} solar masses yr^{-1}. The sinusoidal variation with a period of 47.9 yr and a semi-amplitude of 0.008 d can be interpreted most likely as the light-travel-time effect due to the existence of a low-mass M-type tertiary companion with a projected mass of M_3 \sin i_3=0.26 solar masses. We examined the evolutionary status of WZ Cyg from the absolute dimensions of the eclipsing pair. It belongs to the marginal contact binary systems before broken-contact phase, consisting of a massive primary star with spectral type of F4 and a secondary with the type K1.

Read more  (568kb, PDF)