Discovery of A New Blue Large-Amplitude Pulsator in the SkyMapper DR2: SMSS J184506.82-300804.7

Abstract

We report the discovery of a new Blue Large-Amplitude Pulsator, SMSS J184506-300804 (SMSS-BLAP-1) in Data Release 2 of the SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey. We conduct high-cadence photometric observations in the $u$ band to confirm a periodic modulation of the lightcurve. SMSS-BLAP-1 has a ~19-min pulsation period with an amplitude of 0.2 mag in $u$ band, and is similar to the classical BLAPs found by OGLE. From spectroscopic observations with the Wide-Field Spectrograph on the ANU 2.3m telescope, we confirm it as a low-gravity BLAP: best-fit parameters from the non-LTE Tlusty model are estimated as $T_{\mathrm{eff}}$ = 29,020${}_{-34}^{+193}$ K, $\log g$ = 4.661${}_{-0.143}^{+0.008}$ (cm s${}^{-2}$), and $\log$ n(He)/n(H) = -2.722${}_{-0.074}^{+0.057}$ dex. However, our BLAP exhibits a very He-deficient atmosphere compared to both low- and high-gravity BLAPs, which have $\log$ n(He)/n(H) in the range -0.41~-2.4.

9 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS