LONG-TIMESCALE BEHAVIOR OF THE BLAZHKO EFFECT FROM RECTIFIED KEPLER DATA

In order to benefit from the four year unprecedented precision of the Kepler data, we extracted light curves from the pixel photometric data of the Kepler space telescope for 15 Blazhko RR Lyrae stars. To collect all the flux from a given target as accurately as possible, we defined tailor-made apertures for each star and quarter. In some cases, the aperture finding process yielded sub-optimal results, because some flux have been lost even if the aperture contains all available pixels around the star. This fact stresses the importance of those methods that rely on the whole light curve instead of focusing on the extrema (O - C diagrams and other amplitude independent methods). We carried out detailed Fourier analysis of the light curves and the amplitude independent O - C diagram. We found 12 (80%) multiperiodically modulated stars in our sample. This ratio is much higher than previously found. Resonant coupling between radial modes, a recent theory for explaining the Blazhko effect, allows single, multiperiodic, or even chaotic modulations. Among the stars with two modulations, we found three stars (V355 Lyr, V366 Lyr, and V450 Lyr) where one of the periods dominates in amplitude modulation, but the other period has a larger frequency modulation amplitude. The ratio between the primary and secondary modulation periods is almost always very close to the ratios of small integer numbers. It may indicate the effect of undiscovered resonances. Furthermore, we detected the excitation of the second radial overtone mode f(2) for three stars where this feature was formerly unknown. Our data set comprises the longest continuous, most precise observations of Blazhko RR Lyrae stars ever published. These data are made publicly available and will be unrivaled for years to come.