"Just after the star came around the sun last year, we started looking at it through the Krizmanich Telescope, and we were shocked to see it was seven times fainter than it had ever been before," said Colin Littlefield, a member of the Garnavich lab. "The dimming is a sign that the donating star stopped sending matter to the compact dwarf, and it's unclear why. Although the star is becoming brighter again, the recovery to normal brightness has been slow, taking over six months to get back to where it was when Kepler observed."
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-astrophysicists-dimming-binary-star.html#jCp
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alwyn:
"We had never seen anything like this before," Garnavich said. "For two hours, it would flash quickly and then the next two hours it would pulse more slowly."Read more at: phys.org/news/2017-01-astrophysicists-dimming-binary-star.html#jCp
alwyn:
Intermediate polars are interesting binary systems because the low-density star drops gas toward the compact dwarf, which catches the matter using its strong magnetic field and funnels it to the surface, a process called accretion.Read more at: phys.org/news/2017-01-astrophysicists-dimming-binary-star.html#jCp