A Peculiar Interacting Be Star Binary in the Small Magellanic Cloud

REVINIUS, THOMAS; FERNANDEZ TRINCADO, J.; CIDALE, L.; MENNICKENT, R.; SOSZYNSKI, I.

PUBLICATIONS OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE PACIFIC

UNIV CHICAGO PRESS

Lugar: Chicago; Año: 2018 vol. 130 p. 1 - 11

0004-6280

We find that the emission-line object OGLEJ005039.05-725751.4, a member of the cluster OGLE-CL SMC 64, exhibits a peculiar light curve pattern repeating with a recurrence time of 141.45 days. The light curve resembles periodic outbursts with a duty cycle of 20%. A second long cycle of 2500 days is also detected in the photometric data set. Two X-SHOOTER spectra obtained at minimum and maximum reveal a Be star dominating at minimum light resembling the Classical Be star 48 Lib. The larger Hα emission, the stronger Na D absorption and the appearance of emission in the infrared Ca II triplet at maximum, might indicate periodic mass transfer in a complex binary system.