Related papers: A White Dwarf with Transiting Circumstellar Materi…
A number of White Dwarfs (WDs) in cataclysmic binaries have shown brightness variations consistent with non-radial oscillations as observed in isolated WDs. A few objects have been well-characterized with photometric campaigns in the hopes…
White dwarfs (WDs) can be tidally disrupted only by massive black holes (MBHs) with masses less than $\sim10^5 M_\odot$. These tidal interactions feed material to the MBH well above its Eddington limit, with the potential to launch a…
A large fraction of white dwarfs (WDs) may host planets in their habitable zones. These planets may provide our best chance to detect bio-markers on a transiting exoplanet, thanks to the diminished contrast ratio between the Earth-sized WD…
Accreting white dwarfs are often found in close binary systems with orbital periods ranging from tens of minutes to several hours. In most cases, the accretion process is relatively steady, with significant modulations only occurring on…
The Zwicky Transient Facility has begun to discover binary systems with orbital periods that are less than 1\,hr. Combined with dedicated follow-up systems, which allow for high-cadence photometry of these sources, systematic confirmation…
Debris discs which orbit white dwarfs are signatures of remnant planetary systems. We present twelve years of optical spectroscopy of the metal-polluted white dwarf SDSS J1228+1040, which shows a steady variation in the morphology of the…
We make predictions for the rate of discovery of eclipsing white dwarf-main sequence (WD-MS) binaries in terrestrial-planet transit searches, taking the planned Kepler and Eddington missions as examples. We use a population synthesis model…
We report the discovery of EPIC201702477b, a transiting brown dwarf in a long period (40.73691 +/- 0.00037 day) and eccentric (e=0.2281 +/- 0.0026) orbit. This system was initially reported as a planetary candidate based on two transit…
We present an eccentric precessing gas disk model designed to study the variable circumstellar absorption features detected for WD 1145+017, a metal polluted white dwarf with an actively disintegrating asteroid around it. This model,…
G183$-$35 is an unusual white dwarf that shows an H$\alpha$ line split into five components, instead of the usual three components seen in strongly magnetic white dwarfs. Potential explanations for the unusual set of lines includes a double…
We present four newly validated transiting brown dwarfs identified through TESS photometry and confirmed with high-precision radial velocity measurements obtained from the FEROS and PLATOSpec spectrographs. Notably, three of these…
Intermediate resolution spectroscopy of the white dwarf SDSSJ104341.53+085558.2 contains double-peaked emission lines of CaII8498,8542,8662 and identifies this object to be the second single white dwarf to be surrounded by a gaseous disc of…
We present near-infrared spectroscopic observations of 20 previously known DAZ white dwarfs obtained at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. Two of these white dwarfs (G29-38 and GD362) are known to display significant K-band excesses due…
The bright transient AT2018cow has been unlike any other known type of transient. Its high brightness, rapid rise and decay and initially nearly featureless spectrum are unprecedented and difficult to explain using models for similar burst…
We report the detection of a single transit-like signal in the Kepler data of the slightly evolved F star KIC4918810. The transit duration is ~45 hours, and while the orbital period ($P\sim10$ years) is not well constrained, it is one of…
As the descendants of stars with masses less than 8 M$_{\odot}$ on the main sequence, white dwarfs provide a unique way to constrain planetary occurrence around intermediate-mass stars (spectral types BAF) that are otherwise difficult to…
Newly formed planets (or brown dwarfs) may possess disks or rings that occupy an appreciable fraction of the planet's Hill sphere and extend beyond the Laplace radius, where the tidal torque from the host star dominates over the torque from…
The search for transiting habitable exoplanets has broadened to include several types of stars that are smaller than the Sun in an attempt to increase the observed transit depth and hence the atmospheric signal of the planet. Of all…
In recent years, the number of white dwarfs (WDs) showing infrared (IR) excesses, attributed to circumstellar dust disks, has grown significantly. Gaseous disks have also been detected in some WDs with dust. We obtained optical spectra with…
We present our findings on the spectral analysis of seven magnetic white dwarfs that were presumed to be double degenerates. We obtained time-resolved spectroscopy at the Gemini Observatory to look for evidence of binarity or fast rotation.…