UBVRI observations of the flickering of RS Ophiuchi at Quiescence

TL;DR

This study presents multi-band UBVRI observations of the flickering behavior of the recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi during quiescence, characterizing its source properties and comparing it with other stellar systems.

Contribution

First simultaneous multi-band UBVRI observations of RS Oph's flickering at quiescence, analyzing its temperature, luminosity, and differences from similar systems.

Findings

Flickering source has a temperature of approximately 9500 K.

Flickering luminosity ranges from 50 to 150 solar luminosities.

Flickering behavior differs from that of cataclysmic variables on color-color diagrams.

Abstract

We report observations of the flickering variability of the recurrent nova RS Oph at quiescence on the basis of simultaneous observations in 5 bands (UBVRI). RS Oph has flickering source with (U-B)_0=-0.62 \pm 0.07, (B-V)_0=0.15 \pm 0.10, (V-R)_0=0.25 \pm 0.05. We find for the flickering source a temperature T_fl = 9500 \pm 500 K, and luminosity L_fl = 50 - 150 L_sun (using a distance of d=1.6kpc). We also find that on a (U-B) vs (B-V) diagram the flickering of the symbiotic stars differs from that of the cataclysmic variables. The possible source of the flickering is discussed. The data are available upon request from the authors and on the web www.astro.bas.bg/~rz/RSOph.UBVRI.2010.MNRAS.tar.gz.