We have imaged seventeen recently discovered Sirius-like binary systems with HST/WFPC2 and resolved the white dwarf secondary in eight cases. Most of the implied orbital periods are of order several hundred years, but in three cases (56 Per, Zeta Cygni and REJ1925-566) the periods are short enough that it may be possible to detect orbital motion within a few years. It will then be possible to derive dynamically determined masses for the white dwarfs, and potentially these stars could be used as stringent tests of the mass-radius relation and initial-final mass relation.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0010181,
title = {Resolving Sirius-like binaries with the Hubble Space Telescope},
author = {Matt Burleigh and Martin Barstow and Howard E. Bond and Jay Holberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0010181},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
To appear in Proceedings of the 12th European Workshop on White Dwarfs, eds. H. Shipman and J. Provencal