Observing Periodic Phenomena in Variable Stars and Cataclysmic Binary Stars

The principal investigator has assembled and managed a global network of small telescopes, called the Center for Backyard Astrophysics (CBA), which involves a collaboration among professional and amateur astronomers who carry out long-term observations of Cataclysmic Variables (CVs) and other variable stars. Their goal is to understand the many periodic processes and the long-term behavior of these binary star systems. CVs are pairs of stars orbiting close to each other and exchanging material, and they occasionally show explosive increases in their brightness. The core network of about 30 amateur astronomers in the CBA monitor the changes in CVs, accumulating the long baseline needed for the study of period changes. The CBA is a long-standing, successful program of citizen science in which amateur astronomers provide a meaningful and significant contribution to important scientific research results.

The principal investigator has assembled the CBA to study periodic phenomena, particularly in CVs, with unequalled time sampling. They will continue to find orbital periods, superhump periods, spin periods, precession periods, flickering quasiperiods, dwarf-nova quasiperiods, and a few mysterious periods that have resisted efforts to interpret or explain. The team of professional and amateur astronomers will study the CV population and discover more candidates in each of these categories, building up a more complete account of their evolution and demographics.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.