Honors Program
Midway Honors
Date of Award
8-2016
Thesis Professor(s)
Richard Ignace
Thesis Professor Department
Physics and Astronomy
Thesis Reader(s)
Richard Ignace, Gary Henson, Debra Knisley
Abstract
Utilizing data from the Kepler Mission, we analyze a flickering phenomenon in the symbiotic variable star CH Cygni. We perform a spline interpolation of an averaged lightcurve and subtract the spline to acquire residual data. This allows us to analyze the deviations that are not caused by the Red Giant’s semi-regular periodic variations. We then histogram the residuals and perform moment calculations for variance, skewness, and kurtosis for the purpose of determining the nature of the flickering. Our analysis has shown that we see a much smaller scale flickering than observed in the previous literature. Our flickering scale is on the scale of fractions of a percent of the luminosity. Also, from our analysis, we are very confident that the flickering is a product of the accretion disc of the White Dwarf.
Publisher
East Tennessee State University
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Withheld
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Dingus, Thomas Holden, "Flickering Analysis of CH Cygni Using Kepler Data" (2016). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 357. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/357
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.