Study of the Blazhko Type RRc stars in the Stripe 82 Region Using SDSS and ZTF

Abstract

RR Lyrae stars (RRLs) are pulsating stars, many of which also show a long-term variation called the Blazhko effect which is a modulation of amplitude and phase of the lightcurve. In this work, we searched for the incidence rate of the Blazhko effect in the first-overtone pulsating RR Lyrae (RRc) stars of the Galactic halo. The focus was on the Stripe 82 region in the Galactic halo which was studied by Sesar et al. using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data. In their work, 104 RRLs were classified as RRc type. We combined their SDSS light curves with Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) data, and used them to document the Blazhko properties of these RRc stars. Our analysis showed that among the 104 RRc stars, eight were rather RRd stars, and were excluded from the study. Out of the remaining 96, 34 were Blazhko type, 62 were non-Blazhko type, giving the incidence rate of 35.42% for Blazhko RRc stars. The shortest Blazhko period found was 12.808 ± 0.001 days for SDSS 747380, while the longest was 3088 ± 126 days for SDSS 3585856. Combining SDSS and ZTF data sets increased the probability of detecting the small variations due to the Blazhko effect, and thus provided a unique opportunity to find longer Blazhko periods. We found that 85% of RRc stars had the Blazhko period longer than 200 days.

Keywords

• RR Lyrae variable stars
• RRc variable stars
• Wide-field telescopes