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Published April 2004 | Published
Journal Article Open

The history of the mysterious eclipses of KH 15D: Asiago Observatory, 1967-1982

Abstract

We are gathering archival observations to determine the photometric history of the unique and unexplained eclipses of the pre–main-sequence star KH 15D. Here we present a light curve from 1967 to 1982, based on photographic plates from Asiago Observatory. During this time, the system alternated periodically between bright and faint states, as observed today. However, the bright state was 0.9 mag brighter than the modern value, and the fractional variation between bright and faint states (ΔI = 0.7 mag) was smaller than observed today (3.5 mag). A possible explanation for these findings is that the system contains a second star that was previously blended with the eclipsing star but is now completely obscured.

Additional Information

© 2004 American Astronomical Society. Received 2003 December 16; accepted 2003 December 23. Based on data from the digitized Italian photographic archives, produced under contract MIUR/Cofin 2002 to C. Barbieri, Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università di Padova. We are indebted to Francesca Rampazzi and Cesare Barbieri for their kind assistance with the Asiago archive and their hospitality during J. A. J.'s visit. We are also grateful to Milcho Tsvetkov for creating the Wide-Field Plate Database,6 which made it easy to identify promising plate collections. Bill Herbst, Matt Holman, Geoff Marcy, Dimitar Sasselov, and Kris Stanek provided encouragement and comments on the manuscript that were much appreciated. J. N. W. is supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under grant AST 01-0347.

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