Abstract
THE recent discovery of several binaries with periods in the range of a few hours has raised the problem of their past evolution. Three eclipsing binaries are in that group: the old nova WZ Sge, EX Hya and VV Pup. I shall confine myself to the case of WZ Sge, for which the largest amount of data is available. Krzeminski and Kraft1 have shown that the system is composed of a DA white dwarf, for which they estimate a mass M = 0.59 M⊙, and a secondary of mass m = 0.03 M⊙. The radii are R≃0.87 × 109 cm and r≃7 × 109 cm, and the separation a = 3.7 × 1010 cm.
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References
Krzeminski, W., and Kraft, R. P., Astrophys. J., 140, 921 (1964).
Zapolsky, H. S., and Salpeter, E. E., Astrophys. J., 158, 809 (1969).
Bondi, H., and Hoyle, F., Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 104, 273 (1944).
Paczynski, B., Acta Astron., 17, 287 (1967).
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VILA, S. Physical Sciences: Origin of the Ultra-short Period Binary WZ Sagittae. Nature 225, 1229–1230 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1038/2251229a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/2251229a0
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