paper

A new absolute magnitude calibration with 2MASS for cataclysmic variables

arXiv:astro-ph/0701531 · doi:10.1016/j.newast.2007.01.002

Abstract

Using reliable trigonometric measurements, we find that the absolute magnitude of cataclysmic variables depends on the orbital period and de-reddened $(J - H)_{0}$ and $(H - K_{s})_{0}$ colours of {\em 2MASS} (Two Micron All Sky Survey) photometric system. The calibration equation covers the ranges $0.03 2^{d} < P_{or b} \leq 0.45 4^{d}$ , $- 0.08 < (J - H)_{0} \leq 1.54$ , $- 0.03 < (H - K_{s})_{0} \leq 0.56$ and $2.0 < M_{J} < 11.7$ ; It is based on trigonometric parallaxes with relative errors of $(I ¨ _{I ¨} / I ¨ ) \leq 0.4$ . By using the period-luminosity-colours (PLCs) relation, we estimated the distances of cataclysmic variables with orbital periods and {\em 2MASS} observations and compared them with distances found from other methods. We suggest that the PLCs relation can be a useful statistical tool to estimate the distances of cataclysmic variables.

13 pages, 2 figures and 3 tables, accepted for publication in New Astronomy