High-resolution spectroscopic monitoring of SV Camelopardalis

I. Orbits, absolute masses and radii of the components

¹ Thüringer Landessternwarte, 07778 Tautenburg, Germany
² Universität Hamburg, Hamburger Sternwarte, Gojenbergsweg 112, 21029 Hamburg, Germany e-mail: ahempelmann@hs.uni-hamburg.de, uwolter@hs.uni-hamburg.de

Corresponding author: H. Lehmann, lehm@tls-tautenburg.de

Received: 22 May 2002
Accepted: 27 June 2002

Abstract

This study is a first part of an analysis of newly obtained time series of high-resolution échelle spectra of the RS CVn star SV Cam. We investigate the radial velocity variations of the spectroscopic binary and derive an improved orbital solution for both components. The results allow us to estimate the masses of the primary to 1.1  and of the secondary to 0.7  and, from a previous analysis of the lightcurve of SV Cam, we derive the stellar radii of 1.18  for the primary and of 0.76  for the secondary. From a compilation of eclipse minimum times spanning a period of over 100 years we compute the orbital elements of a hypothetical third body belonging to the SV Cam system. We obtain a period of 52.3 years which is slightly longer than derived by authors before and a much higher eccentricity of at least 0.42. From the mass function there follows a lower limit to the third body mass of 0.17 . The applied procedure also provides an optimized period of eclipses of 0 59307180.