The emission distribution of RR Pictoris

Abstract

We present time-resolved optical spectroscopy of the old nova RR Pic. Two emission lines (Halpha and He I) are present in the observed part of the spectrum and both show strong variability. Halpha has been used for Doppler tomography in order to map the emission distribution in this system for the first time. The resulting map shows the emission from the disc as well as two additional emission sources on the leading and trailing side of the disc. Furthermore we find evidence for the presence of either a disc-overflow or an asymmetric outflow from the binary with velocities up to +- 1200km/s. The origin of the outflow would be the emission source on the leading side of the accretion disc.