On the Incidence Rate of Blazhko Stars

Abstract

In a recent paper (Kovacs 2018) we examined the incidence rate of the modulated RR Lyrae stars by using the data from Campaigns 01 - 04 of the Kepler K2 mission. We found an observed rate of ~90%, implying near 100% underlying rate, after correcting for detection bias due to observational noise. In this work we extend the sample to Campaign 08 and check the reliability of our earlier estimate. We get the same high rate, stressing the importance of full time series modelling (including systematics) in searching for shallow signals in the presence of large amplitude variabilities.