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78 Tau, Eclipsing Binary Star Justin 1 1 Hudson , Elizabeth 2 Warner 2 UMD Physics, UMD Astronomy Telescope Operation Goals of This Project • To observe an eclipsing binary star in this case 78 Tau. • Gather pictures of the eclipsing binary star throughout its phase. • Use software (AstroImageJ) to analyze the luminosity of the target star and to graph the luminosity verses time. Background Information • An eclipsing binary star is a star that orbits another star, that when one begins to move in front of the other, it blocks the light which is visible from Earth. • 78 Tau is in the Taurus constellation with a brightness magnitude of 3.35-3.41 and a period of 0.07564 days (1.84 hours)¹. Picture of 78 Tau, what it actually looks like in the night sky² • Using the UMD Observatory 6 and 7inch telescopes, with CCD cameras to gather images we must first cool the CCD cameras for at least 2 hours. • Following cooling, taking flat images of the sky slowly getting darker as day turns to night to help clean up our images that could be altered by dust or other things interrupting the light coming into the telescope. • Once it is night, calibration of the telescope, then focusing on a star that is easily identifiable. This lets the computer running the telescope where in the sky it is looking and to take clear pictures. • With this done, we type in the coordinates to the target star. We must use the star map to find the target star, center it, then set a series of pictures over time and let the telescope collect our data. Expected Results • If everything would have gone as planned, we would have produced a light curve as seen to the bottom picture. • What this light curve shows is that the deepest dips in brightness during the phase is when the brightest star is blocked by the other creating the eclipsing effect like when Earth experiences a solar eclipse. The smaller dips in brightness is when the brighter star blocks out the light from the other star when passing in front of it. • From these curves, we can tell if stars follow the characteristics of an eclipsing binary or other types of variable stars. Setbacks Star map of 78 Tau with other identifying stars in the sky³ • Due to poor weather conditions in the late winter/early spring, all attempts to observe were ruined by clouds, rain or snow. • Even though the weather prevented data collection, the telescope operation skills that were acquired prove to be very valuable to star gazing and examining the night sky. References 1. AAVSO, The International Star Index, 2009 2. SIMBAD, Astronomical database, 3. Stellarium, Planetarium, March 2015 4. www.physics.sfasu.edu, Binary Star Lecture Sponsored by the Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park