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Astronomical Cardiology II: A Search For Heartbeat Stars Using APOGEE and TESS

Authors: Jowen Callahan, D. M. Rowan, C. S. Kochanek, M. M. FausnaughPublished: 2026-08-12Paper ID: 2608.12474Category: astro-ph.SRLicense: CC BY 4.0

Abstract

Stellar binaries in short-period, highly eccentric systems with significant tidal deformations near pericenter, also known as heartbeat stars, are a laboratory for studying dynamical tides and oscillations in stars. We identify 50 heartbeat stars using TESS light curves of stars identified as binaries using SDSS APOGEE. We fit their phase-folded TESS light curves with an analytic model to measure their orbital periods, eccentricities, inclinations, and arguments of periastron. We measure the mass function of targets with enough APOGEE radial velocity observations to obtain a constraint on the secondary mass. We confirm our previous results that the non-giant heartbeat stars have started to evolve off the main sequence and that the fraction of (near) main sequence binaries that are heartbeat stars rises rapidly with effective temperature.

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