Photometric monitoring of Luminous Blue Variables

TL;DR

This study reports on near-infrared photometric monitoring of Luminous Blue Variables, revealing significant long-term brightness variations and short-term variability in several LBVs over two years.

Contribution

It provides new observational data on LBV variability in the near-infrared, highlighting long-term and short-term brightness changes.

Findings

Wray 17-96 and V481 Sct show >1 mag variability in J band.

LBV 1806-20 exhibits ~0.2 mag variability over ~60 days.

Detected variability indicates dynamic behavior of LBVs in near-infrared.

Abstract

We present some preliminary results from our program of intensive near-infrared photometric monitoring of a sample of confirmed and candidate Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) conducted from 2008 to 2010. Clear long-term variability has been observed for Wray 17-96 and V481 Sct, with overall brightness variation greater than 1 mag in the J band. Other sources, such as LBV 1806-20 showed detectable variability with amplitudes of few tenths of a magnitude with time-scale of about 60 days.