A ROSAT Survey of Contact Binary Stars
M. T. Geske, S. J. Gettel, T. A. McKay
Abstract
Contact binary stars are common variable stars which are all believed to emit relatively large fluxes of x-rays. In this work we combine a large new sample of contact binary stars derived from the ROTSE-I telescope with x-ray data from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS) to estimate the x-ray volume emissivity of contact binary stars in the galaxy. We obtained x-ray fluxes for 140 contact binaries from the RASS, as well as 2 additional stars observed by the XMM-Newton observatory. From these data we confirm the emission of x-rays from all contact binary systems, with typical luminosities of approximately 1.0 x 1030 erg s-1. Combining calculated luminosities with an estimated contact binary space density, we find that contact binaries do not have strong enough x-ray emission to account for a significant portion of the galactic x-ray background.
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