White dwarf binaries: Fast photometry from the Thai 2.4m telescope with ULTRASPEC

Puji Irawati, Andrea Richichi, Vik Dhillon, Thomas R. Marsh, N. Sanguansak & Boonrucksar Soonthornthum

National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand

The recently inaugurated Thai National Observatory (TNO) is equipped with a 2.4m Ritchey-Chretien telescope and the high-speed versatile ULTRASPEC camera. This new facility is located at 2457 m elevation on Doi Inthanon, 100 km from the city of Chiang Mai. ULTRASPEC is a visitor instrument, built by a Consortium of UK institutes, which is available at TNO starting from summer 2013. This instrument employs a low-noise, frame-transfer EMCCD designed for observation of faint objects and for high time resolution astrophysics. We present some of the results obtained in the first and second observing cycle (November 2013 - May 2015), focusing particularly on fast photometry data. Among many other results, we will highlight the observations of several short period cataclysmic variables and post common-envelope binaries, including one system which is believed to be the first one to show a large and long-lived prominence structure in its light curves.

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