UBV obs. of the contact binary BF Pavonis

A time-of-minimum study allows detection of a likely period increase of about 0.015s/yr. The Wilson-Devinney code is employed to simultaneously model the B and V light curves for several fixed values of the mass ratio q.

From the quality-of-fit of the different solutions an approximate value of q=1.4+/-0.2 is derived. Absolute values of masses, dimensions, and luminosities are estimated by means of standard mass-luminosity relations for main-sequence stars. The detected period variation determines a lower limit of 5x10^-7M_{sun}_/yr for the rate of mass transfer from the less-massive to the more-massive component.