The shortest period field contact binary

Abstract

Photometric and spectroscopic results for the contact binary GSC 01387-00475 (ASAS 083128+1953.1) are presented. The existence of this binary with the orbital period of P = 0.2178 d strengthens the argument that the cut-off of the period distribution for contact binaries - until now defined by CC Comae - is very sharp. The only case of a still shorter period is known in a globular cluster where more compact contact configurations are in fact expected. While the spectroscopic orbit of GSC 01387-00475 is well defined, the low orbital inclination of the binary and the presence of a spectroscopic companion contributing about 1/3 of the total light conspire to reduce the photometric variability to ~0.09 mag. The photometric data are currently inadequate to identify the source of the small amplitude (0.02 - 0.03 mag) intrinsic variability of the system.

to appear in MNRAS

References in corpus (3)

• Contact binaries with additional components. III. The adaptive optics detections
• The short period end of the contact binary period distribution based on the All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS)
• Radial Velocity Studies of Close Binary Stars. XII

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Radial Velocity Studies of Close Binary Stars. XV
• Radial Velocity Studies of Close Binary Stars. XIV
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