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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
A study was carried out for 309 Algol systems to show that most of the secondary components of low mass-ratio systems are hydrogen deficient stars. This hydrogen deficiency is evident from their positions on a Δ log L - Δ log T plot, where Δ is the difference between the observed quantity, log L or log Te, and the value of the same quantity for a star of the same mass on the empirical Main Sequence. The secondary components are shown to occupy the region of mass losing helium dwarfs on this plot. A correlation has also been obtained between the excess of effective temperature and the mass ratio of the system.