This work has made use of data from the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) project. The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) project is primarily funded to search for near-Earth asteroids through NASA grants NN12AR55G, 80NSSC18K0284, and 80NSSC18K1575; byproducts of the NEO search include images and catalogs from the survey area. This work was partially funded by Kepler/K2 grant J1944/80NSSC19K0112 and HST GO-15889 and STFC grants ST/T000198/1 and ST/S006109/1. The ATLAS science products have been made possible through the contributions of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, the Queen’s University Belfast, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the South African Astronomical Observatory, and the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS), Chile. VSD and ULTRACAM are supported by STFC grant ST/Z000033/1. J.G.M. gratefully acknowledges support from the Heising-Simons Foundation and the Pappalardo family through the MIT Pappalardo Fellowship in Physics.
An Eclipsing 8.56 Minutes Orbital Period Mass-transferring Binary
Creators
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Chickles, Emma T.1
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Chakraborty, Joheen1
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Burdge, Kevin B.1
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Dhillon, Vik S.2, 3
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Draghis, Paul1
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El-Badry, Kareem4
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Green, Matthew J.5, 6, 7, 8, 9
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Householder, Aaron1
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Hughes, Sarah1
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Layden, Christopher1
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Littlefair, Stuart P.2
- Munday, James10
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Pelisoli, Ingrid10
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Redden, Maya S.11
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Tonry, John12
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van Roestel, Jan13, 14
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Angile, Francesco Elio1
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Brown, Alex J.15
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Castro Segura, Noel10
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Dinsmore, Jack11
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Dyer, Martin2
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Furesz, Gabor1
- Gabutti, Michelle1
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Garbutt, James2
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García-Mejía, Juliana1, 16
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Jarvis, Daniel2
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Kennedy, Mark R.17
- Kerry, Paul2
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McCormac, James10
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Mo, Geoffrey4, 18
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Osip, Dave19
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Parsons, Steven2
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Pike, Eleanor2
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Piotrowski, John J.18
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Romani, Roger W.11
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Sahman, David2
- Simcoe, Rob1
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1.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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2.
University of Sheffield
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Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
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4.
California Institute of Technology
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5.
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
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6.
University of Oklahoma
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7.
University of Colorado Boulder
- 8. JILA, University of Colorado and National Institute of Standards and Technology, 440 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0440, USA
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9.
National Institute of Standards and Technology
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10.
University of Warwick
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11.
Stanford University
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12.
University of Hawaii at Manoa
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13.
Institute of Science and Technology Austria
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14.
University of Amsterdam
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15.
Universität Hamburg
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Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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University College Cork
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Carnegie Observatories
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19.
Las Campanas Observatory
Abstract
We report the discovery of ATLAS J101342.5−451656.8 (hereafter ATLAS J1013−4516), an 8.56 minute orbital-period mass-transferring AM Canum Venaticorum (AM CVn) binary with a mean Gaia magnitude of G = 19.51, identified via periodic variability in light curves from the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) of Gaia white dwarf candidates. Follow-up with the Large Lenslet Array Magellan Spectrograph shows a helium-dominated accretion disk, and high-speed ULTRACAM photometry reveals pronounced primary and secondary eclipses. We construct a decade-long timing baseline leveraging light curves from the ATLAS and Gaia surveys, as well as the high-speed imagers ULTRACAM on the New Energy Telescope and proto-Lightspeed on the Magellan Clay telescope. From this timing baseline, we measure an orbital period derivative of P ̇ = − 1.60 ± 0.07 × 10⁻¹² s s⁻¹. Interpreted in the context of stable mass transfer, the magnitude and sign of P ̇ indicate that the orbital evolution is governed by the interplay between gravitational-wave-driven angular-momentum losses and mass transfer, directly probing the donor’s structural response to mass loss. We constrain the accretor and donor mass based on stable mass-transfer arguments assuming angular-momentum loss dominated by gravitational-wave emission, allowing us to infer the characteristic gravitational wave strain of the binary for future space-based GW observatories such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). We predict a characteristic strain corresponding to a 4 yr LISA signal-to-noise ratio ≳10, establishing ATLAS J1013−4516 as a strong prospective LISA source that will probe long-term orbital evolution in the mass-transferring regime.
Copyright and License
© 2026. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Acknowledgement
Data Availability
The photometric and spectroscopic data products used in this work are publicly available at Zenodo: doi:10.5281/zenodo.18615493.
Files
Chickles_2026_ApJ_1000_237.pdf
Additional details
Related works
- Is new version of
- Discussion Paper: arXiv:2601.07925 (arXiv)
- Is supplemented by
- Dataset: 10.5281/zenodo.18615493 (DOI)
Funding
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NN12AR55G
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NSSC18K0284
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NSSC18K1575
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- J1944/80NSSC19K0112
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- HST GO-15889
- Science and Technology Facilities Council
- ST/T000198/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council
- ST/S006109/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council
- ST/Z000033/1
- Heising-Simons Foundation
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dates
- Submitted
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2026-01-12
- Accepted
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2026-02-18
- Available
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2026-03-26Published
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department , Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
- Publication Status
- Published