Pulsation modeling of the Cepheid Y Ophiuchi with RSP/MESA

Impact of the circumstellar envelope and a high projection factor on the Baade-Wesselink method

Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Centre, Polish Academy of Sciences, Bartycka 18, 00-716 Warszawa, Poland
e-mail: vhocde@camk.edu.pl

Received: 30 October 2023
Accepted: 19 December 2023

Abstract

Context. Y Ophiuchi (Y Oph) is a classical Cepheid with a pulsation period of P = 17.12 days. This star is reported to be as dim as a Cepheid of about half its pulsation period and it exhibits a low radial velocity and light-curve amplitude. For these reasons, Y Oph is not used to calibrate period-luminosity (PL) relation and its distance remains uncertain.

Aims. Our objective is to conduct hydrodynamical pulsation modeling of Y Oph to derive its distance and provide a physical insight into its low amplitude and luminosity, constrained by an extensive set of observations.

Methods. We first performed a linear analysis on a grid of models using the hydrodynamical pulsation code MESA-RSP to find the combinations of mass, metallicity, effective temperature, and luminosity resulting in linear excitation of pulsations with period of about 17 days. Then, we performed non-linear computations to obtain the full-amplitude pulsations of these models. Last, we compare the results to a complete set of observations along the pulsation cycle, including the angular diameter obtained by interferometry, effective temperature, and radial velocity obtained by high-resolution spectroscopy, as well as the light curves in the VJHK_SLM bands. We simultaneously adjusted the distance, the color excess and circumstellar envelope (CSE) model to fit the light curves and the angular diameter.

Results. We find that all pulsation models at high effective temperatures are in remarkable agreement with the observations along the pulsation cycle. This result suggests that the low amplitude of Y Oph may be explained by proximal location to the blue edge of the instability strip (IS). We also find that a pulsational mass of about 7 − 8 M_⊙ is consistent with a non-canonical evolutionary model with moderate overshooting, PL relation and Gaia parallax. However, a much lower mass below 5 M_⊙ is required to match Baade-Wesselink (BW) distance measurements from the literature. We show that the combination of the impact of the CSE on the photometry, together with a projection factor of about 1.5, explains the discrepant distance and luminosity values obtained from BW methods.

Conclusions. Our findings indicate that the small pulsation amplitude of Y Oph can be attributed to its proximity to the blue edge of the instability strip. Additionally, our analysis reveals that the distances obtained using the BW method are biased compared to Gaia, mainly due to the impact of circumstellar envelope on the photometries and a high p-factor close to 1.5. Despite these unique characteristics, Y Oph is a long-period classical Cepheid that holds potential for calibration of the PL relation in the Galaxy.