The centenary of the Blazhko effect: Is the solution in sight?

by Katrien Kolenberg (Institute of Astronomy, University of Vienna, Austria)

Friday 7 Sept 2007, 10:30 → 11:30 Europe/Stockholm

FA31

In 1907 the Russian astronomer Sergei Nikolai Blazhko discovered that the light variations of the RR Lyrae star RW Dra did not show a strictly monoperiodic behavior. Now, 100 years later, the phenomenon of amplitude and phase modulation in the astrophysically important RR Lyrae stars remains a mystery. I present an overview of the status of research devoted to the Blazhko effect, its possible explanations and their shortcomings. I also propose strategies to make significant progress in this field. One of them consists in the analysis of high-resolution spectroscopic data, which have been gathered recently with the best instruments available.