Table · dataset · 2026
eta Car historical light curves
Listed in IVOA Registry (Virtual Observatory)
The large amount of ground-based photometric measurements of eta Carinae obtained since 1940 have remained problematic for quantitative modeling due to the blending of flux from the stellar core and the surrounding circumstellar nebula.
Description
In the era of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), spatially resolved imaging and spectrophotometry have enabled disentanglement of these components, allowing recovery of the stellar core V-band brightness from ground-based observations.
We isolate the V-band fluxes of the stellar core and nebula using 1999-2020 HST (Advanced Camera for Surveys and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph) observations, and use these to calibrate coeval ground-based photometry. The main finding is an orbital light curve with an amplitude of +/-0.2mag, many times higher than that modeled by ellipsoidal deformation of the primary. The observations suggest that Roche lobe overflow starts at -75 days before periastron in coincidence with the start of rising in the orbital light curve, and remains for 150 days.
Read the rest (1 more)
An expanding (and afterward dissipating) gas cloud reflecting the light from the primary would explain the observed large amplitude of the orbital light curve. A sharp periodic photometric peak occurs at ~-18 days from the periastron. It is followed by a broad minimum around the superior conjunction of the secondary (T0 + 5.2 days), which we interpret as a partial eclipse of the ejected material, in coincidence with the shallow minimum in X-rays, which also has been attributed to an eclipse.
Links
Where it is published
- Reference page cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/1008/152 ↗
landing page · from IVOA Registry
Documentation and papers
- ADS 2026ApJ..1008..152D ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2026ApJ..1008..152D ↗
publication · from IVOA Registry
Catalogue records · 2
- VOResource record dc.g-vo.org/oai.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=ivo_vor&identifier=ivo%3… ↗
metadata API · from IVOA Registry
- Registry record (GAVO) dc.g-vo.org/I/cds.vizier/j/apj/1008/152 ↗
catalogue entry · from IVOA Registry
Topics
- Stated by source
- Optical
- From keywords
- Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Inferred from text
- Imaging 75%
Provenance · 1 source records, 9 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| IVOA Registry (Virtual Observatory) | ivo://cds.vizier/j/apj/1008/152 | 14 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| access_level | source · IVOA Registry | connector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].local:field:astronomy | mapping · IVOA Registry | connector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[modality].ivoa_waveband:optical | source · IVOA Registry | connector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[modality].local:modality:imaging | enrichment · IVOA Registry | keyword-concept-rules@1.0.0 | title+description (75%) |
| description | source · IVOA Registry | connector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0 | rr.resource.res_description |
| license_text | source · IVOA Registry | connector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0 | |
| publication_date | source · IVOA Registry | connector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · IVOA Registry | connector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0 | rr.resource.res_title |
| updated_date | source · IVOA Registry | connector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0 |