• Celebration of Scholars 2020

  • Atmospheric Gas Loss in Hot Jupiters Under Variable Stellar Irradiation
  • Automated Repair of Buffer Overflow
  • Biogeochemical Cycling of Nutrient Elements in Stormwater Retention Ponds
  • Bioinformatic Investigation of Nuclear Transport
  • Buried Alive: Ecology of the Infaunal Sponge Oceanapia
  • Caloric Load Preferentially Influences Epithelial Differentiation in the Murine Uterus to Drive Endometrial Hyperplasia
  • A Compilation of Systems That Are Both Novae and Dwarf Novae
  • Computer Modeling of Nucleophilic Substitution and Beta Elimination Reactions
  • Cubed Sphere: Simulating Tilted Black Hole Accretion Disk and Their Effects on Astrophysical Jets
  • Data Visualization: From Covid-19 to Back on the Bricks
  • Designing a Mobile Flood Warning Application for the Charleston, SC Region
  • Developing a Mobile Application for Flood Warning in the Charleston, SC Region
  • Discovering Authorship of Flawed Code Snippets
  • Dynamic Network Activation of Hypothalamic Neurons in REM Sleep
  • Effect of Storage Temperature and Time on Urine Electrolyte Assessment
  • Effects of Changeover-Requirement Location on Between-Sequence Variation in Pigeons
  • The Effects of Estradiol Treatment on Synaptic Reorganization and Plasticity Around Motoneurons After Traumatic Peripheral Nerve Injury in Mice.
  • Effects of Steroid Hormones on Voluntary Physical Activity Levels
  • Encountering Overdose: An Analysis of College Students' Overdose Experiences
  • Evolution of Pelvis Musculoskeletal Anatomy in Lizards
  • Examining the Back To Bricks Reopening Plan on Various Demographics Within Charleston
  • Expanding LGBTQ+ Responsiveness at CofC Student Health Services
  • Expression-building in Squid 3
  • Growing Up Salty: The Effects of Transient Salinity on Tadpole Growth, Behavior, and Development
  • HailPoint, Broadcasting, and Social Media
  • A Hubble Space Telescope Direct Imaging Investigation of Extrasolar Planets
  • Inter-comparison of Rainfall Measurements from 1- and 2-Dimensional Video Disdrometers
  • Investigating Nanocolloids Using Shadowgraphy
  • Investigating the Effect of Episodic Stellar Activity on Planetary Evolution
  • Investigating Truncated Disk Simulations for Signs of Quasi Periodic Oscillations
  • Lower Extremity Jump-Landing Biomechanics After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction with Quadriceps Tendon Versus Patellar Tendon Autografts
  • Mapping Water in the Outer Asteroid Belt - Origins of Life
  • Mars Map Maker: User Empowerment in Meta Data and Data Submission
  • MARS: Middleware for Assisting the Registration of Samples
  • Patterns Observed on Mussel Bed Formation
  • Preliminary Analysis of Bulk Rain Variables Acquired from Laser Precipitation Monitors Mounted at Different Heights on a Vertical Tower
  • Progress Toward Anti-microbial Polymers: Adventures in Small Molecule Synthesis and Polymer Synthesis
  • Properly Resolving the Effective Measurement Area in a High-Fidelity Rain Measurement Device
  • A Religious History of the College of Charleston
  • Simulations of Light Transmission Through a Virtual Cloud
  • Strongly Magnetized Disks & Thermal Stability
  • Subdividing Rain Drop Arrivals into Steady Intervals
  • Synthesis and Spectral Characterization of 6-membered Silanes
  • Teaching Data Science Skills with a Focus on Visualization
  • Thermochemistry of Novel Polymers
  • A Tomographic Scan of the Accretion Disk Around a Supermassive Black Hole
  • Topsoil: An Open-Source Visualization Engine for Geochronological Data
  • Tropical Cyclone Climatology for Columbia and Greenville SC
  • Two-scale Factor Universality of O2: Experiments Under Density Gradients
  • Uncertainty of Heterogeneous Freezing Rate of Water on Muscovite Mica
  • The Use and Abuse of Philosophy in History: James Warley Miles and the Dangers of Racist Dehistoricization
  • Using Sentinel-2 MSI Data to Monitor the Physical Environment of Coral Reefs in the U.S. Virgin Islands
  • Virtual Assistant for Pair Programming (VAPP)
  • Women with HIV's Perception of Coercion During Contraceptive and Infant Feeding Counseling

College Home / Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities / A Glance at Research / Celebration of Scholars 2020 / A Compilation of Systems That Are Both Novae and Dwarf Novae

Student: Ashley Dowd

Major: Physics, Astrophysics 

Mentor: Dr. Ashley Pagnotta

Department: Physics and Astronomy 

A Compilation of Systems That Are Both Novae and Dwarf Novae

In star systems that contain a white dwarf star (which is the remnant left over after a star like our Sun uses all its fuel) and a companion star, novae and dwarf novae are frequent occurrences. Both phenomena occur because hydrogen is being transferred from the companion star to the surface of the white dwarf. On its way to the white dwarf surface, the hydrogen gas travels through an accretion disk, a disk of hot matter orbiting the white dwarf. Instabilities in this disk can cause larger-than-usual clumps of hydrogen to be transferred onto the surface all at once, which causes small brightenings that we observe as dwarf nova outbursts. As the hydrogen gas slowly builds up on the surface of the white dwarf, the pressure becomes high enough to trigger runaway nuclear fusion, which we observe as a large brightening known as a nova eruption. We identified all of the systems known to have both novae and dwarf novae and compiled all of the available data on those systems, since such a compilation does not exist. We used that data to look for predicted correlations between the amount of time from nova eruption to dwarf nova outburst and physical characteristics of the systems, to better understand the evolution of such systems.