An upper limit to the mass of a close companion candidate to {\sigma} Ori E

The famous, very young, helium rich, magnetically-active, radio and X-ray emitter, short-period rotationally variable, spectroscopically peculiar star {\sigma} Ori E may have a close late-type stellar companion, which could explain flaring activity observed in some {\sigma} Ori E X-ray light curves. In 2009, Bouy et al. announced the detection of a faint companion candidate in the Ks band at 0.330 arcsec (130 AU) to the B2 Vp primary. Here, we carry out z'-band lucky imaging with AstraLux at the 2.2 m Calar Alto telescope in an attempt to constrain the properties of the companion candidate to {\sigma} Ori E. We impose a maximum mass of 2.0+0.2-0.1 Msol and an earliest spectral type of K2+/-1, which leaves the door open to a new, inexpensive, near-infrared, adaptive-optics study.
Comment: The Observatory, Vol. 136, pp. 226-231