Collaborative Project: Periodic Phenomena in Cataclysmic Binaries

9314567 Patterson Our understanding of the orbital evolution, rotation, photometric waves and emission line behavior in cataclysmic binary stars hinges on observations of periodic variations in their brightnesses and spectra. Unfortunately, there has been little systematic effort made to measure these periodicities and link the photometric behavior with the spectroscopic behavior. The PI will collaborate with J. Thorstensen of Dartmouth College to address this shortcoming. The PI will obtain large amounts of photometric data while Thorstensen will collect spectra for many cataclysmic binaries. ***