Discovery of Eclipsing Binary Central Stars in the Planetary Nebulae M 3-16, H 2-29 and M 2-19

Abstract

Progress in understanding the formation and evolution of planetary nebulae (PN) has been restricted by a paucity of well-determined central star masses. To address this deficiency we aim to (i) significantly increase the number of known eclipsing binary central stars of PN (CSPN), and subsequently (ii) directly obtain their masses and absolute dimensions by combining their light-curve parameters with planned radial velocity data. Using photometric data from the third phase of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) we have searched for periodic variability in a large sample of PN towards the Galactic Bulge using Fourier and phase-dispersion minimisation techniques. Among some dozen periodically variable CSPN found, we report here on three new eclipsing binaries: M 3-16, H 2-29 and M 2-19. We present images, confirmatory spectroscopy and light-curves of the systems.

4 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (3)

• MASH-II: More Planetary Nebulae from the AAO/UKST HαSurvey
• Planetary nebulae with emission-line central stars
• Binary central stars of planetary nebulae

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• Binary Planetary Nebulae Nuclei towards the Galactic Bulge. I. Sample Discovery, Period Distribution and Binary Fraction
• The mixed chemistry phenomenon in Galactic Bulge PNe
• The planetary nebula IPHASXJ211420.0+434136 (Ou5): insights into common-envelope dynamical and chemical evolution
• An occultation event in a triple post-AGB star
• The post-common-envelope binary central star of the planetary nebula ETHOS 1