Mu Eridani from MOST and from the ground: an orbit, the SPB component’s fundamental parameters and the SPB frequencies

Abstract

<p><em>MOST</em> time series photometry of &mu; Eri, an SB1 eclipsing binary with a rapidly rotating SPB primary, is reported and analysed. The analysis yields a number of sinusoidal terms, mainly due to the intrinsic variation of the primary, and the eclipse light curve. New radial-velocity observations are presented and used to compute parameters of a spectroscopic orbit. Frequency analysis of the radial-velocity residuals from the spectroscopic orbital solution fails to uncover periodic variations with amplitudes greater than 2 km s^&minus;1. A Rossiter&ndash;McLaughlin anomaly is detected from observations covering ingress.From archival photometric indices and the revised <em>Hipparcos</em> parallax, we derive the primary&rsquo;s effective temperature, surface gravity, bolometric correction and the luminosity. An analysis of a high signal-to-noise spectrogram yields the effective temperature and surface gravity in good agreement with the photometric values. From the same spectrogram, we determine the abundance of He, C, N, O, Ne, Mg, Al, Si, P, S, Cl and Fe.The eclipse light curve is solved by means of EBOP. For a range of mass of the primary, a value of mean density, very nearly independent of assumed mass, is computed from the parameters of the system. Contrary to a recent report, this value is approximately equal to the mean density obtained from the star&rsquo;s effective temperature and luminosity. Despite limited frequency resolution of the <em>MOST</em> data, we were able to recover the closely spaced SPB frequency quadruplet discovered from the ground in 2002&ndash;2004. The other two SPB terms seen from the ground were also recovered. Moreover, our analysis of the <em>MOST</em> data adds 15 low-amplitude SPB terms with frequencies ranging from 0.109 to 2.786 d^&minus;1.</p>