The Palomar Transient Factory Orion Project: Eclipsing Binaries and Young Stellar Objects

Abstract

The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) Orion project is an experiment within the broader PTF survey, a systematic automated exploration of the sky for optical transients. Taking advantage of the wide field of view available using the PTF camera at the Palomar 48" telescope, 40 nights were dedicated in December 2009-January 2010 to perform continuous high-cadence differential photometry on a single field containing the young (7-10Myr) 25 Ori association. The primary motivation for the project is to search for planets around young stars in this region. The unique data set also provides for much ancillary science. In this first paper we describe the survey and data reduction pipeline, and present initial results from an inspection of the most clearly varying stars relating to two of the ancillary science objectives: detection of eclipsing binaries and young stellar objects. We find 82 new eclipsing binary systems, 9 of which we are candidate 25 Ori- or Orion OB1a-association members. Of these, 2 are potential young W UMa type systems. We report on the possible low-mass (M-dwarf primary) eclipsing systems in the sample, which include 6 of the candidate young systems. 45 of the binary systems are close (mainly contact) systems; one shows an orbital period among the shortest known for W UMa binaries, at 0.2156509 \pm 0.0000071d, with flat-bottomed primary eclipses, and a derived distance consistent with membership in the general Orion association. One of the candidate young systems presents an unusual light curve, perhaps representing a semi-detached binary system with an inflated low-mass primary or a star with a warped disk, and may represent an additional young Orion member. Finally, we identify 14 probable new classical T-Tauri stars in our data, along with one previously known (CVSO 35) and one previously reported as a candidate weak-line T-Tauri star (SDSS J052700.12+010136.8).

66 pages, 27 figures, accepted to Astronomical Journal. Minor typographical corrections and update to author affiliations

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Cited by in corpus (30)

• The Palomar Transient Factory photometric calibration
• Science with a wide-field UV transient explorer
• New low-mass eclipsing binary systems in Praesepe discovered by K2
• The PTF Orion Project: a Possible Planet Transiting a T-Tauri Star
• Time-Series Photometry of Stars in and around the Lagoon Nebula. I. Rotation Periods of 290 Low-Mass Pre-Main-Sequence Stars in NGC 6530
• On the evolutionary and pulsation mass of Classical Cepheids: III. the case of the eclipsing binary Cepheid CEP0227 in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• IPAC Image Processing and Data Archiving for the Palomar Transient Factory
• Follow-Up Observations of PTFO 8-8695: A 3 MYr Old T-Tauri Star Hosting a Jupiter-mass Planetary Candidate
• The ASAS-SN Catalog of Variable Stars VII: Contact Binaries are Different Above and Below the Kraft Break
• iLocater: A Diffraction-limited Doppler Spectrometer for the Large Binocular Telescope
• Asteroid rotation periods from the Palomar Transient Factory survey
• The low mass star and sub-stellar populations of the 25 Orionis group
• The Mean Magnetic Field Strength of CI Tau
• An eclipsing double-line spectroscopic binary at the stellar/substellar boundary in the Upper Scorpius OB association
• The detached-binary channel for the formation of contact binaries
• The ASAS-SN Catalog of Variable Stars VIII: "Dipper" Stars in the Lupus Star-Forming Region
• Statistical Searches for Microlensing Events in Large, Non-Uniformly Sampled Time-Domain Surveys: A Test Using Palomar Transient Factory Data
• YETI observations of the young transiting planet candidate CVSO 30 b
• Palomar Transient Factory and RR Lyrae: Metallicity-Light Curve Relation Based on ab-Type RR Lyrae in Kepler Field
• H-alpha Variability in PTFO8-8695 and the Possible Direct Detection of Emission from a 2 Million Year Old Evaporating Hot Jupiter
• The Highly-Eccentric Detached Eclipsing Binaries in ACVS and MACC
• A reappraisal of parameters for the putative planet PTFO 8-8695b and its potentially precessing parent star
• Young Stellar Object candidates toward the Orion region selected from GALEX
• Evidence for planetary hypothesis for PTFO 8-8695b with five-year optical/infrared monitoring observations
• The NEMESIS Catalogue of Young Stellar Objects for the Orion Star Formation Complex. I. General description of data curation
• Fundamental properties of the pre-main sequence eclipsing stars of MML 53 and the mass of the tertiary
• Evidence that the planetary candidate CVSO30c is a background star from optical, seeing-limited data
• Weighing stars from birth to death: mass determination methods across the HRD
• Search for transiting exoplanets and variable stars in the open cluster NGC 7243
• Application of the Trend Filtering Algorithm for Photometric Time Series Data