Science Papers for 2010

Despite the limited operations at SALT over the last few years, there were still a number of science papers published by SALT in the past year primarily focusing on time domain astrophysics. These included papers on near Earth asteroids, cataclysmic variables, and other time varying stars and can be found on the SALT publications list.

Tomek Kwiatkowski lead three papers on observations of near Earth asteroids. These observations allowed the measurement of their rotational period and the amplitude in the light variations of the objects. An example of SALT observation of a near Earth Asteroid is given below.

Studies of cataclysmic variables were the main topic of most papers from 2010. SALT observations were part of the multi-site monitoring project of the accreting white Dwarf SDSS J161033.64-010223.3 (V386 Ser) as reported by Mukadam et al. Patrick Woudt and collaborators presented observations of outbursts in VW Hyi. Revnivtsev et al. present evidence for truncated disks in seven intermediate polars that was partially based on SALTICAM slotmode observations. Stephen Potter and collaborators present multi-site observations of INTEGRAL polar IGRJ14536-5522 that includes SALTICAM data. Further observations of transients objects include observations of classical T Tauri stars by Günther et al. They find no evidence for sub-minute periodicity in these objects.

Finally, Ido Finkelman along with SALT collaborators present additional results from SALT observations of spherical galaxies to measure the extragalactic extinction law. Below, are some of their B-R color maps based on SALT images for some of their elliptical and lenticular galaxies. The white areas indicate the dust lanes that appear in these galaxies.

Finkelman et al. 2010, MNRAS, 409, 727