Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Proffitt, C..
Revealing faint circumstellar nebulosity and faint stellar or substellar companions to bright stars typically requires use of techniques for rejecting the direct, scattered, and diffracted light of the star. One such technique is Lyot coronagraphy. We summarize the performance of the white-light coronagraphic capability of the Space Telescope Imaging spectrograph, on board the Hubble Space Telescope.
Twenty-one Cepheids, known or suspected to have blue companions, were studied with the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite. For 13 of them, companions were indeed seen, though they were generally fainter in the UV than expected. For four Population I Cepheids, the suspected companions were not seen. For none of the Population II Cepheids could a companion be detected. The effective temperatures and luminosities of the companions which could be observed are discussed, and the positions of Cepheids and companions in the T(eff) luminosity diagrams are compared with positions expected from stellar evolution calculations.
The ultraviolet energy distributions of the B stars in the LMC cluster NGC 2100 have been studied. The ultraviolet extinction law was studied for the LMC cluster. The T(eff)-luminosity diagrams were determined. The brightest stars in the cluster are evolved stars on the 'horizontal' supergiant branch. No P Cygni profiles indicating mass loss were recognized for these supergiants.
The ultraviolet energy distribution of the metal-poor supergiant HD 112374 is analyzed based on observations from the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) satellite for the region between 1200 and 2000 A. A discontinuity was found in the UV spectra at 2600 A which confirmed the low-abundance of heavy elements found by Luck et al. (1983). Values for effective temperature and log g in HD112374 were consistent with the star being a very luminous Population II semi-regular variable. The full observational results are presented in a table.
Ultraviolet observations of barium stars and other cool stars with peculiar element abundances are reported. Those observations attempted to find hot white dwarf companions. Among six real barium stars studied, only Zeta Cap was found to have a white dwarf companion. Among seven mild, or marginal, barium stars studied, at least three were found to have hot subluminous companions. It is likely that all of them have white dwarf companions.