Tomasz Nowakowski is a member of the physics.org community.
Astronomers from China used the One-meter Wide-field Telescope to look for variable stars in the open cluster. There are 72 new variables in this area. There is a paper on arXiv.org.
Star clusters can be used to study stellar evolution as they are collections of stars with similar properties. Astronomers often look for variable stars in young clusters to advance the understanding of pre-main-sequence stars and the initial phases of stellar evolution.
An extensive search for variable stars was carried out by a team of astronomer led by Hong Wang. At a distance of over 5000 light years, NGC 2355 is an open cluster that is 900 million years old. Only a few variables have been searched for.
The variable stars in the field surrounding NGC 2355 have been studied. The researchers wrote in the paper that more than 3000 frames were obtained in the V band with the one-meter wide-field telescope.
There were 88 variable stars detected by Wang's team. 72 of the 88 stars are new variables and the rest are known variables.
The stars were classified by their light curves and fundamental parameters. Of the 52 stars reported in the paper, 26 are pulsating stars, and four are rotating variables. There are six stars that are not clear.
"For those variable stars for which no type has been determined, we might need more observations later to identify and classify these unknown variable stars," the astronomer wrote.
Out of the 52 stars, 38 were classified as Delta Scuti variables, nine as RR Lyraes, and three as Gamma Doradus variables. The majority of the 26 eclipsing binaries are of the same type.
There are four variable stars reported in the paper, in addition to the 11 previously known variables classified as cluster members. They are located at the cluster's outer region and show the homogeneity in space positions. The authors of the study found that NGC 2355 has a reddening at a level of 0.24.
More information: Hong Wang et al, Searching for Variable Stars in the Open Cluster NGC 2355 and Its Surrounding Region. arXiv:2206.06569v1 [astro-ph.SR], arxiv.org/abs/2206.06569There is a science network.
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