The Blazhko Project: Joint Efforts in Solving a Century-old Problem
- Author(s)
- Katrien Kolenberg
- Abstract
Almost a century after its discovery, the phenomenon of amplitude and/or phase modulation, observed in a large percentage of the RR Lyrae stars, still lacks widely acceptable theoretical understanding. Recent attempts to theoretically explain the effect focus on two alternatives: the magnetic models and the resonances models, both involving the presence of nonradial pulsation components.
In this paper the Blazhko Project is presented, a larger international collaboration focused on understanding the Blazhko effect. The aim of the project is to combine spectroscopic and photometric data from a sample of well-selected Blazhko and non-Blazhko stars, in order to reveal crucial information on the physical mechanism responsible for the modulation.
The possible key to the century-old Blazhko puzzle lies in the detailed study of the line profile variations (LPV) over the pulsation and Blazhko cycle. We briefly discuss the methodology of the project.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Astrophysics
- Pages
- 95-102
- Publication date
- 2005
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 1030 Physics, Astronomy
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/d3855093-4623-48b7-975b-eb97c9d290d4