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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2016
Cen X-3 and Her X-1 are the only two X-ray binaries which are known to pulsate periodically (at 4.8s and 1.2s respectively) in the X-ray region. The latter was identified with a fourteenth magnitude light and spectrum variable HZ Her, which was subsequently found to exhibit 1.24 second optical pulsations during certain phases. The possibility that Cen X-3 may prove to be as interesting an object optically has resulted in a wide spread search for its optical counterpart.