Taking a break: Paused accretion in the symbiotic binary RT Cru

Symbiotic binaries sometimes hide their symbiotic nature for significant periods of time. There is mounting observational evidence that, in symbiotics that are powered solely by the accretion red giant’s wind material onto a white dwarf, without any quasi-steady shell burning on surface characteristic emission lines optical spectrum can vanish, leaving semblance an isolated giant spectrum. Here we present compelling this disappearance from RT Cru 2019 was due to decrease rate, which derived modeling X-ray This drop rate leads lower flux ionizing photons and thus faint or absent photoionization We observed dwarf with XMM-Newton Swift X-rays UV collected ground-based spectra photometry obtained over last 33 yr. long-term coverage shows during most year 2019, so low, Ṁ = (3.2 ± 0.06) × 10 −11 M ⊙ yr −1 (d/2.52 kpc) 2 , historically detected hard almost vanished, faded roughly 5 mag, U B V flickering amplitude decreased, Balmer virtually disappeared January through March. Long-lasting low-accretion episodes such as one reported here may hamper chances experiencing nova-type outburst despite high mass accreting dwarf.