CSI 2264: SIMULTANEOUS OPTICAL AND INFRARED LIGHT CURVES OF YOUNG DISK-BEARING STARS IN NGC 2264 WITH CoRoT and SPITZER—EVIDENCE FOR MULTIPLE ORIGINS OF VARIABILITY
By A. Cody, J. Stauffer, A. Baglin, G. Micela, L. Rebull, E. Flaccomio, M. Morales-Calderón, Suzanne Aigrain, J. Bouvier, L. Hillenbrand and 35 more. 2014
283 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We present the Coordinated Synoptic Investigation of NGC 2264, a continuous 30 day multi-wavelength photometric monitoring campaign on more than 1000 young cluster members using 16 telescopes. The unprecedented combination of multi-wavelength, high-precision, high-cadence, and long-duration data opens a new window into the time domain behavior of young stellar objects. Here we provide an overview of the observations, focusing on results from Spitzer and CoRoT. The highlight of this work is detailed analysis of 162 classical T Tauri stars for which we can probe optical and mid-infrared flux variations to 1% amplitudes and sub-hour timescales. We present a morphological variability census and then use metrics of periodicity, stochasticity, and symmetry to statistically separate the light curves into seven distinct classes, which we suggest represent different physical processes and geometric effects. We provide distributions of the characteristic timescales and amplitudes and assess the fractional representation within each class. The largest category (>20%) are optical “dippers” with discrete fading events lasting ∼1–5 days. The degree of correlation between the optical and infrared light curves is positive but weak; notably, the independently assigned optical and infrared morphology classes tend to be different for the same object. Assessment of flux variation behavior with respect to (circum)stellar properties reveals correlations of variability parameters with Hα emission and with effective temperature. Overall, our results point to multiple origins of young star variability, including circumstellar obscuration events, hot spots on the star and/or disk, accretion bursts, and rapid structural changes in the inner disk.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ba9720bd9cc5b48688d2ecc14291cd91dc797b61
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- ZODIACAL EXOPLANETS IN TIME (ZEIT). III. A SHORT-PERIOD PLANET ORBITING A PRE-MAIN-SEQUENCE STAR IN THE UPPER SCORPIUS OB ASSOCIATION (2016, background): “Disks around stars can create “dips” in the light curve as vertical structures in the disks periodically occult the host star (e.g., Cody et al. 2014).”
- The Close Binary Fraction of Solar-type Stars Is Strongly Anticorrelated with Metallicity (2018, background): “Moreover, because accretion is likely stochastic, driven by nonuniform turbulent molecular clouds, not all solar-type stars of the same metallicity experienced the same accretion history (Nguyen et al. 2009; Cody et al. 2014; Bate 2018).”
- THE HERSCHEL ORION PROTOSTAR SURVEY: SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTIONS AND FITS USING A GRID OF PROTOSTELLAR MODELS (2016, background): “…large samples of protostars and pre-mainsequence stars in nearby star-forming regions with Spitzer at 3.6 and 4.5 µm (Morales-Calderón et al. 2011; Cody et al. 2014; Rebull et al. 2014; Günther et al. 2014; Poppenhaeger et al. 2015; Wolk et al. 2015; Rebull et al. 2015), found that up to ∼ 90%…”
- Planet Hunters IX. KIC 8462852-where's the flux? (2015, background): “Inhomogeneous dust distributions have been invoked to explain dips seen towards some young stars such as UX Orionis or AA Taulike ‘dipper’ systems (Herbst et al. 1994; Herbst & Shevchenko 1999; Morales et al. 2009; Cody et al. 2014; Ansdell et al. 2016).”
- Accretion onto Pre-Main-Sequence Stars (2016, background): “…RO T m ag ni fic at io n CO RO T m ag ni fic at io n a b Figure 9 COROT lightcurves of two objects in NGC 2264 (Cody et al. 2014, Stauffer et al. 2014) showing (a) irregular accretion variability and (b, with inset) irregular accretion with short bursts.”