AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 70 Cataclysmic Variables and Novae
Poster, Tuesday, 9:20am-6:30pm, January 10, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[70.10] Optically Thick Steady-State Accretion Disk Model Analyses of Three Dwarf Novae in Outburst

S. G. Stegman, E. M. Sion (Villanova University)

We present synthetic spectral analyses of three dwarf novae systems, two systems below the period gap and one above, all with newly determined distances. Spectra of the three systems were taken in outburst using the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) telescope. The spectra covered 1170-2000Å\ with a resolution of 5Å. We applied a grid of steady-state, optically thick accretion disk models to these spectra using the best-available information on system parameters in the literature. For V1159 Ori, we find that its outburst FUV spectrum requires a massive white dwarf (1.2Msolar) and an accretion rate between 10-10 and 10-10.5 Msun/yr for inclinations lower than the published upper limit of 55 degrees. The derived accretion rate is surprisingly low for an outburst spectrum. The implication of our model fitting for all three systems are discussed.

We would like to acknowledge support of this research by NSF Grant AST05-07514 and NASA Grant NNG04GE78G to Villanova University.

The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: scott.stegman@villanova.edu

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