English

Three new hot hydrogen-deficient pre-white dwarfs

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2024-12-23 v1

Abstract

We have detected three new hydrogen-deficient (H < 0.001 mass fraction) pre-white dwarfs (WDs) with helium-dominated atmospheres. The first object is a relatively cool PG1159 star (effective temperature Teff = 72,000 K) that has the lowest surface gravity of any PG1159 star known (log g = 4.8). It is a PG1159 star in the earliest pre-WD phase. The second object is a hot subdwarf O (sdO) star (Teff = 50,000 K, log g = 5.3) with high carbon and oxygen abundances. It is only the third known member of the recently established CO-sdO spectral class, which comprises stars that are thought to be formed by a merger of a disrupted low-mass CO WD with a higher-mass He WD. The third object is one of the rare stars of spectral type O(He) (Teff = 90,000 K, log g = 5.5).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.15984,
  title  = {Three new hot hydrogen-deficient pre-white dwarfs},
  author = {Klaus Werner and Nicole Reindl and Max Pritzkuleit and Stephan Geier},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.15984},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Accepted by A&A

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:43:57.847Z