Time-resolved spectrophotometry of HZ Herculis and DQ Herculis

Abstract

The image-tube scanner at the 3 m telescope at Lick Observatory was employed to study the spectral changes which occur during the pulse period in the optical pulsars HZ Herculis (1.2 s period) and DQ Herculis (71 s period). The data acquisition is described and the tools needed for the data analysis developed. Then the results of the observations are presented. In the case of HZ Herculis (Hercules X-1), observations cover the binary phase interval 0.18 to 0.26 and are concerned only with those pulsations that have been shown (Middleditch and Nelson, 1976) to originate at the x-ray heated surface of the Roche lobe filling companion of the neutron star. It is found that these pulsations are distributed throughout the optical continuum. Observations appear to agree at least qualitatively with the numerical results of other investigators. The observations of DQ Herculis cover one full binary cycle, excluding eclipse. Again pulsations are found distributed throughout the continuum with generally weak wavelength dependence. However, in this case the emission line lambda 4686 (He II) is more strongly modulated than the underlying continuum and exhibits an unexpected effect: The pulse phase increases rapidly with increasing wavelength across the line. This effect can bemore » understood in terms of a simple model in which the pulsations arise at the inner edge of the accretion disk, excited by radiation which originates at hot spots on the white dwarf and which sweeps around the disk as the degenerate star rotates. A similar model in which the pulsations arise predominantly from the back half of the surface of the disk appears in several respects to be more promising. The evident relation between the phase shift across the emission line and the so-called 360/sup 0/ phase shift through eclipse, discovered by Warner et al. (1972) is also discussed. « less

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