[vsnet-alert 10887] re CSS 081231:071126+440405 (in CMC14)

[qso at Safe-mail.net]

There's a single detection of this eclipsing Polar candidate in CMC14 from almost exactly 5 years ago (date needs checking, I was adding up on my fingers) at r' 14.55.

So it might be in high states reasonably often.


Wading thro' bits of literature on these sorts of things it looks like although the pre-eclipse thing is preferred as being explained as an eclipse created by the accreting column, it doesn't look as though the alternative hypothesis of a fully synchronous system with one of two visible hotspots being self eclipsed by the white dwarf has been fully rejected yet.  One of those two camps of thought things, with both camps convinced they're right, maybes.  I can't remember offhand if white dwarfs in cataclysmic binaries always rotate synchronously.

The old spectroscopic tomography on this thing would no doubt help decide it, but for once here's a CV that is interesting and potentially informative with respect to new science and where actual photometric work might still be relevant for discerning the geometry of it all.  Quite different to the run of the mill, really.

And from the potential past high state record as per the CMC14 detection, also one suitable for visual monitoring for future high states (when this one is over).

GALEX gives a negative FUV-NUV colour, of about -0.24 (mags about 18), whether that's due to the white dwarf or the accerting pole is unclear, but with such a UV colour even at likely quiescence it is strange (as already noted) that it's not in any xray catalogues as a faint source or something, especially as one pole at least must likely be visible.  It's not always clear how contemporaneous GALEX mags are either.  As already stated if the 2MASS colours are for quiescence then NIR is primarily detecting the secondary, coz if it is a "Polar" (AM Her type magnetic cataclysmic binary), then there's no accretion disc, if only by definition.

Cheers

John