1989/02/01 by W. B. Honey, G. T. Bath, P. A. Charles +7 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · Engineering · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/236.4.727
openalex publication_date 1989/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/23
It has been suggested that the wide outbursts of U Gem stars are analogous to the wide or ‘super’ outbursts of SU UMa stars and hence that the basic mechanism which gives rise to the two types of outburst is the same. If this is true, then the U Gem type stars should also exhibit some of the more exotic properties associated with superoutbursts in SU UMa stars, in particular superhumps. In order to test this hypothesis, extensive photometric observations of a wide and a narrow outburst (and also the period of quiescence separating them) of the dwarf nova SS Cygni were obtained in order to search for modulations at or near the orbital period. No such modulations were found in either the wide or narrow outbursts to a limit of ∼ 0.05 mag. We interpret this result in terms of Whitehurst's tidal superhump model which shows that SU UMa and U Gem systems are two manifestations of the same basic driving mechanism, but that the presence of superhumps is limited to extreme mass-ratio systems and hence should not appear in SS Cygni.