Spectroscopic and photometric observations of Symbiotic Nova PU Vul during 2009-2016

TL;DR

This study presents spectroscopic and photometric observations of PU Vul from 2009 to 2016, revealing its ongoing evolution, pulsations, and spectral features in the nebular stage after its 1977 outburst.

Contribution

It provides new low-resolution spectral and UBVJHKL photometric data, analyzes variability, and estimates the hot and cool component parameters during the nebular stage.

Findings

PU Vul exhibits sinusoidal light curves with ~0.7 mag amplitude in U band.

Brightness variability due to cool component pulsations is clearly observed.

First appearance of the OVI Raman scattering line in the third orbital cycle.

Abstract

A new set of low-resolution spectral and UBVJHKL-photometric observations of the symbiotic nova PU Vul is presented. The binary has been still evolving after the symbiotic nova outburst in 1977 and now it's in the nebular stage. It is found that the third orbital cycle (after 1977) was characterized by great changes in light curves. Now PU Vul demonstrates a sine-wave shape of all light curves (with an amplitude in the U band of about 0.7 mag), which is typical for symbiotic stars in quiescent state. Brightness variability due to cool component pulsations is now clearly visible in the VRI light curves. The amplitude of the pulsations increases from 0.5 mag in V band to 0.8 mag in I band. These two types of variability, as well as a very slow change of the hot component physical parameters due to evolution after the outburst of 1979, influence the spectral energy distribution of the system. The emission lines variability is highly complex. Only hydrogen lines fluxes vary with orbital phase. An important feature of the third orbital cycle is the first appearance of the OVI, 6828A Raman scattering line. We determined the hot component temperature by means of Zanstra method applied to the He II, 4686 line. Our estimate is about 150000 K for the spectrum obtained near orbital maximum in 2014. The VO spectral index derived near pulsation minimum corresponds to M6 spectral class for the cool component of PU Vul.