Gaia14aae - Loiano Observations

The Gaia satellite has discovered a unique binary system (Gaia14aae) where one star is 'eating' the other, but neither star has any hydrogen, the most common element in the Universe. The system could be an important tool for understanding how binary stars might explode at the end of their lives.

This is a movie of the observations of Gaia14aae taken at Loiano Observatory.

The observations span 88 mins (30 second exposures in the g-band were used), and include two eclipses where the light from the white dwarf star completely disappears (leaving only a faint glow presumably from the disk and the back side of the companion star. The movie has been sped up by a factor 250, so that the whole clip lasts only 21 seconds.

The data were taken at Loiano Observatory on 2014/10/24 (with the 152cm Cassini Telescope, Principal Investigators (PIs): Gisella Celmentini & Lukasz Wyrzykowski. The observers were Heather Campbell, Krzysztof Rybicki, Piotr Wielgórski, Giuseppe Altavilla and a Support Astronomer, Roberto Gualandi. Reduction and observing strategy : Simon Hodgkin).

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