Astron. Astrophys. 326, 195-202 (1997)

1. Introduction

EUVE J2115-58.6 was detected during the EUVE all-sky survey with a countrate of 0.05 cts s^-1 (Bowyer et al. 1996) and tentatively identified as a magnetic cataclysmic variable by Craig (1996) who identified strong H-Balmer, HeI, HeII and CaII emission lines. Moderate resolution spectroscopy in the blue wavelength regime was done by Vennes et al. (1996). They observed pronounced radial velocity variations of H and HeII and determined the orbital period of the system of 110.8 min with a possible one-cycle-per-day alias of 102.8 min.

The source was also detected with the ROSAT-PSPC during the X-ray all-sky survey performed in 1990/1991 at a countrate of 0.380 s^-1 (galactic coordinates , ). We are currently running a program in order to identify optically bright ROSAT survey sources extracted from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey Bright Source Catalog (1RXS, Voges et al. 1997) at high galactic latitudes (, limiting countrate 0.2 s^-1). With no certain optical identification at the time, RX J2115.7-5840 entered our target list with high priority. When its nature as magnetic CV became clear from a low-resolution spectrum, phase-resolved data were collected in order to study its main characteristics. Later it became clear, that polarimetric and photometric observations has been performed coincidentally from SAAO, too. We present here the combined results of our optical observations obtained over a 70-day basis from South Africa and Chile.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1997

Online publication: April 20, 1998
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