Related papers: Runaway Dwarf Carbon Stars as Candidate Supernova …
Hot subdwarf (SD) stars are the stripped cores of red giant stars in transition to the white dwarf sequence. The B-type subdwarfs (sdB) are powered by helium fusion in the core, more evolved ones (sdO) by shell burning. Low mass SDs may…
Hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are core helium-burning stars located on the extreme horizontal branch. About half of the known sdB stars are found in close binaries. Their short orbital periods of 1.2 h to a few days suggest that they are post…
The project Massive Unseen Companions to Hot Faint Underluminous Stars from SDSS (MUCHFUSS) aims to find sdBs with compact companions like massive white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes. Here we provide classifications, atmospheric…
The secondaries of the massive binary systems can be found as runaway stars after being ejected due to the supernova (SN) of the more massive component. We search for such stars inside the supernova remnants (SNRs), where a recent SN is…
The project Massive Unseen Companions to Hot Faint Underluminous Stars from SDSS (MUCHFUSS) aims at finding hot subdwarf stars with massive compact companions (white dwarfs with masses $M>1.0 {\rm M_{\odot}}$, neutron stars or black holes).…
(abridged) We describe the discovery of an extremely wide pair of low-mass stars with a common large proper motion and discuss their possible membership in a Galactic halo stream crossing the Solar neighbourhood. (...) The late-type (M7)…
We analyze time-series spectroscopy of the white dwarf merger candidate J005311 and confirm the unique nature of its optical spectrum. We detect an additional broad emission feature peaking at 343nm that was predicted in the Gvaramadze et…
The white dwarf SDSS J124043.01+671034.68 (SDSS J1240+6710) was previously found to have an oxygen-dominated atmosphere with significant traces of neon, magnesium, and silicon. A possible origin via a violent late thermal pulse or binary…
Many characteristics of dwarf carbon stars are broadly consistent with a binary origin, including mass transfer from an evolved companion. While the population overall appears to have old-disc or halo kinematics, roughly 2$\,$per cent of…
The fastest moving stars provide insight into several fundamental properties of the Galaxy, including the escape velocity as a function of Galactocentric radius, the total mass, and the nature and frequency of stellar encounters with the…
We present the discovery of a new extreme high proper motion object (3.5 arcsec/year) which we classify as an ultracool subdwarf with [M/H] = -0.5. It has a formal spectral type of sdM9 but also shows L-type features: while the VO bands are…
After the discovery of a substellar companion to the hot subdwarf HD 149382, we have started a radial velocity search for similar objects around other bright sdB stars using the Anglo-Australian Telescope. Our aim is to test the hypothesis…
We present high time-resolution spectroscopy of the eclipsing cataclysmic variable SDSSJ143317.78+101123.3 obtained with QUCAM2, a high-speed/low-noise electron-multiplying CCD camera. Littlefair et al. measured the mass of the secondary…
Hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are evolved core helium-burning stars with very thin hydrogen envelopes. In order to form an sdB, the progenitor has to lose almost all of its hydrogen envelope right at the tip of the red giant branch. In close…
A search of more than 3,000 square degrees of high latitude sky by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has yielded 251 faint high-latitude carbon stars (FHLCs), the large majority previously uncataloged. We present homogeneous spectroscopy,…
We report the discovery of a new detached, double white dwarf system with an orbital period of 39.8 min. We targeted SDSS J163030.58+423305.8 (hereafter J1630) as part of our radial velocity program to search for companions around low-mass…
We propose an explanation for the origin of hyperfast neutron stars (e.g. PSR B1508+55, PSR B2224+65, RX J0822-4300) based on the hypothesis that they could be the remnants of a symmetric supernova explosion of a high-velocity massive star…
We consider the finite velocity of the ejecta of a type Ia supernova (SN Ia) in the double detonation (DDet) scenario with a white dwarf (WD) mass-donor companion, and find that the runaway velocity of the surviving (mass donor) WD is lower…
We measure the variation of the escape speed of the Galaxy across a range of $\sim$ 40 kpc in Galactocentric radius. The local escape speed is found to be $521^{+46}_{-30}\,\mathrm{km\,s^{-1}}$, in good agreement with other studies. We find…
We started a new project which aims to find compact hot subdwarf binaries at low Galactic latitudes. Targets are selected from several photometric surveys and a spectroscopic follow-up campaign to find radial velocity variations on…