Day 31

Today in the morning I used Topcat again and re-did the search for companion stars to T Cha, and V4046 sgr, because their simbad PM's are significantly different from the mean of their PM's. This time, I matched the PPMXL and UCAC3 lists and then made two more columns on the matched table for the mean pmRA and pmDE. Then, I matched this with the 2mass catalog and limited the stars so that only stars with the mean of their PM's within 15 mas/yr of the binary star's mean PM. I didn't come up with any new star coordinates for T Cha, but I came up with a few for v4046 sgr. However, none are emitting x-rays . . .but it was worth going back to just check and make sure. Also, I finished putting the vectors to represent proper motions on the ds9 x-ray image of MP Mus and it's possible companions. For lunch we had free pizza and watched a movie about entrepreneurs.

In the afternoon, I began by going through Joel's email about how he calculated the bolometric luminosity of our unknown star, which we nicknamed 2M1155-79 (from its 2mass coordinates). The ratio of its x-ray luminosity to its bolometric luminosity is a little large, but not unreasonable, but Joel suspected that this was because the x-ray luminosity (from the spectral fit) was a bit too large. So Rudy re-did the spectral fit and found another x-ray luminosity that is smaller and more reasonable. Now we have officially discarded the RXJ star as a possible companion star and the only one we are still considering is this 2M1155-79. Joel said he might try and get someone to calculate proper motion themselves of T Cha and 2M1155-79 (by comparing recent images with images taken a long time ago). Meanwhile, my job is to write up a detailed summary of how I obtained the data (using Topcat) so that Joel can write a paper on this if he decides to. Also I need try and keep my powerpoint up to date, and decide if I want to present what I did with the planetary nebulae in the beginning of the summer or not . . so much to do, so little time!