Abstract
Our current knowledge of the basic characteristics of CVs, such as their distance and luminosity, are largely based on observations of optically bright (V < 16 mag) systems. This has tended to favour the more luminous members (M v ~ 7...10 mag) lying nearby in the Galactic plane (z < 400 pc). In order to alleviate this bias, Howell & Szkody (1990) compiled a list of ~90 CVs that were faint enough and were at high galactic latitude to potentially place them well outside the Galactic plane, in the halo. We have obtained infrared J and Z band images of a number of the CVs listed by Howell & Szkody (1990) in order to establish whether these systems are truely at large distances, or are instead a population of intrinsically faint objects lying relatively nearby. The distances were determined using Bailey’s method (1982) and incorporated the recent S K calibrations by Ramseyer (1994).
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Bailey, J., 1982, MNRAS, 197, 31
Howell, S.B., Szkody, P., 1990, Ap. J., 356, 623
Ramseyer, T.F., 1994, Ap. J., 425, 243
Warner, B., 1987, MNRAS, 245, 208
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© 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Sproats, L.N., Howell, S.B., Mason, K.O. (1996). Distances and Absolute Magnitudes of a Sample of Faint Cataclysmic Variables. In: Evans, A., Wood, J.H. (eds) Cataclysmic Variables and Related Objects. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 208. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0325-8_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0325-8_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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