Pulsation Blip in the roAp Star HD 60435 Detected by SALT and TESS*

Abstract HD 60435, a member of the rapidly oscillating Ap class of pulsating stars, was recently reported to be the first star to be observed to entirely cease pulsating. This conclusion was drawn from photometric TESS observations that have less sensitivity to pulsational variability than spectroscopic time series data. To that end, we acquired three epochs of time resolved spectra, to coincide with TESS observations, with the Southern African Large Telescope to test for the continued cessation of pulsation. We found the star to show a pulsation blip at a single epoch, then continue to be non-variable at two further epochs. The same signal, and lack thereof, was also seen when analyzing the nearly contemporaneous TESS photometry.