The Binary Central Star of Hf 38

Abstract

Despite years of effort, the impact of central star binarity on planetary nebula formation and shaping remains unclear. This is hampered by the fact that detecting central star binarity is inherently difficult, and requires very precise observations. The fraction of planetary nebulae with binary central stars therefore remains elusive. This work presents initial results of central star analysis using data from the VST H$\alpha$ Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+). The true central star of PN Hf 38 has been revealed, and it exhibits a 0.465$\pm$0.334 $i$ band magnitude excess, indicative of a M0V companion.

Submitted to the conference proceedings of IAUS 323: Planetary Nebulae: Multi-wavelength probes of Stellar and Galactic Evolution

References in corpus (3)

• The Molonglo Galactic Plane Survey (MGPS-2): Compact Source Catalogue
• MASH-II: More Planetary Nebulae from the AAO/UKST HαSurvey
• The binary fraction of planetary nebula central stars I. A high-precision, I-band excess search