ROTSE observations of the young cluster IC 348

Abstract

CCD observations of stars in the young cluster IC 348 were obtained from 2004 August to 2005 January with a 0.45 m ROTSEIIId robotic reflecting telescope at the Turkish National Observatory site, Bakirlitepe, Turkey. The timing analysis of selected stars whose X-Ray counterpart were detected by Chandra X-Ray Observatory were studied. The time series of stars were searched for rotational periodicity by using different period search methods. 35 stars were found to be periodic with periods ranging from 0.74 to 32.3 days. Eighteen of the 35 periodic stars were new detections. Four of the new detections were CTTSs and the others were WTTSs and G type (or unknown spectral class) stars. In this study, we confirmed the stability of rotation periods of TTauri stars. The periods obtained by Cohen et al. and us were different by 1%. We also confirmed the 3.24 h pulsation period of H254 which is a delta Scuti type star as noted by Ripepi et al. but the other periods detected by them were not found. We examined correlation between X-ray luminosity and rotational period of our sample of TTSs. There is a decline in the rotational period with X-ray luminosity for late type TTSs.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomical Journa