The Centurion 18 telescope of the Wise Observatory

We describe the second telescope of the Wise Observatory, a 0.46-m Centurion 18 (C18) installed in 2005, which enhances significantly the observing possibilities. The telescope operates from a small dome and is equipped with a large-format CCD camera. In the last two years this telescope was intensively used in a variety of monitoring projects. The operation of the C18 is now automatic, requiring only start-up at the beginning of a night and close-down at dawn. The observations are mostly performed remotely from the Tel Aviv campus or even from the observer's home. The entire facility was erected for a component cost of about 70k$ and a labor investment of a total of one man-year. We describe three types of projects undertaken with this new facility: the measurement of asteroid light variability with the purpose of determining physical parameters and binarity, the following-up of transiting extrasolar planets, and the study of AGN variability. The successful implementation of the C18 demonstrates the viability of small telescopes in an age of huge light-collectors, provided the operation of such facilities is very efficient.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, some figures quality was degraded, accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

A hot mini-Neptune in the radius valley orbiting solar analogue HD 110113

We report the discovery of HD 110113 b (TESS object of interest-755.01), a transiting mini-Neptune exoplanet on a 2.5-d orbit around the solar-analogue HD 110113 (Teff = 5730 K). Using TESS photometry and High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) radial velocities gathered by the NCORES program, we find that HD 110113 b has a radius of 2.05 ± 0.12 R⊕ and a mass of 4.55 ± 0.62 M⊕. The resulting density of $2.90^{+0.75}_{-0.59}$ g cm-3 is significantly lower than would be expected from a pure-rock world; therefore HD 110113 b must be a mini-Neptune with a significant volatile atmosphere. The high incident flux places it within the so-called radius valley; however, HD 110113 b was able to hold on to a substantial (0.1-1 per cent) H-He atmosphere over its ∼4 Gyr lifetime. Through a novel simultaneous Gaussian process fit to multiple activity indicators, we were also able to fit for the strong stellar rotation signal with period 20.8 ± 1.2 d from the RVs and confirm an additional non-transiting planet, HD 110113 c, which has a mass of 10.5 ± 1.2 M⊕ and a period of $6.744^{+0.008}_{-0.009}$ d

The February 1999 superoutburst of the SU UMa-type dwarf nova CG CMa

The original article can be found at : http://www.konkoly.hu/cgi-bin/IBVS4759--Copyright Konkoly ObservatoryPeer reviewe

A study of two post-common envelope binary systems

‘The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com '. Copyright Blackwell Publishing. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.08898.x [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]We present intermediate-resolution, phase-resolved spectra of the close-binary systems EC 11575−1845 and V664 Cas, the central star of the planetary nebula HFG 1. Both systems have a very rich emission-line spectrum originating from the face of the cool star, which is irradiated by the hot subdwarf star. The H i emission lines are wide, consistent with Stark broadening. These have a complex shape due to strong absorption near the line centre. We report on new spectroscopic orbits for both subdwarf stars, based on radial velocity measurements of their He ii lines. The orbits of the heated face of the cool companions were measured from narrow emission lines, and from the wide H i profiles; some differences were found between ions. At phases around 0, absorption lines from the photosphere of the secondary star of V664 Cas are seen. These are used to estimate a spectral type of mid-F to early K, and we report on their radial velocities. Synthetic spectra from the non-local thermodynamic equilibrium model atmospheres were used to fit features in the optical spectrum of the hot subdwarf star of EC 11575−1845, from which we estimate Teff= 105 000 ± 20 000 K, log g= 6.7 ± 0.3, log nHe/nH=−0.8 ± 0.1 . Finally, we consider the most likely range of component masses for these two systems.Peer reviewe

The exotic eclipsing nucleus of the ring planetary nebula SuWt 2

SuWt 2 is a planetary nebula (PN) consisting of an edge-on thin bright ionized ring, and perpendicular fainter bipolar lobes. The central star (12th magnitude) is an eclipsing binary, which is however too cool to ionize the PN; IUE spectra show no evidence for a hot, evolved PN central star, that could have first created and then ionised the nebula. We followed the central binary of SuWt 2 (NSV 19992) for over a decade with photometry and spectroscopy, and from these data obtained light and radial velocity curves and built an SED, from all of which we measured the stellar and system parameters. The two components are nearly identical A1 V stars, each of mass ∼2.7 M⊙. Both are in the short-lived “blue-hook” evolutionary phase that occurs between the main sequence and the Hertzsprung gap, with an age of about 520 Myr. One puzzle is that the stars' rotational velocities are different from each other, and considerably slower than synchronous with the orbital period. We find that it is possible that the center-of-mass velocity of the eclipsing pair is varying with time, suggesting that there is an unseen third orbiting body in the system