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GO Com: linear post-superoutburst fading Dear Colleagues, The VSNET Collaboration has received new data from Tom Krajci and Donn Starkey. In a global sense, GO Com is linearly fading in its post-superoutburst state. The mean fading rate is comparable to the mean fading rate during the superoutburst plateau phase. This behavior reminds us of WX Cet in 1998 (Kato et al. 2001 PASJ 53, 893). [excerpt from this article] > WX Cet showed a slow fading after the superoutburst. This phenomenon may > be an exemplification of a gradual decay of the disk viscosity, which > determines the luminosity of the disk. Following Osaki et al. (2001), > we suspect that the ignition of thermal instability accidentally failed > to occur under competition with the decay of viscosity in the present > post-superoutburst state of WX Cet. The post-superoutburst decline of > WX Cet was almost perfectly linear (exponential), with a rate of > 0.10 mag/d. Interestingly, this rate of decline is almost perfectly > identical with the mean rate of decline (0.10 mag/d) during the plateau > stage. Although this coincidence may be merely accidental, this may > suggest the existence of a time scale for the decay of the disk viscosity > related to the decay of the superoutburst plateau. This explanation could also apply to the current state of GO Com. There seems to be a common physics to determine the decline rate in post-superoutburst stage of these rarely outbursting objects. Further observations to see whether or not a rebrightening occurs in GO Com are extremely important, as in the WX Cet case. Regards, Taichi Kato VSNET Collaboration team
Return to the Powerful Daisaku Nogami
vsnet-adm@kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp
