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200 papers

A total of 81 DA white dwarfs have been observed with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope in a snapshot program. The targets were selected to be in the $T_{\rm eff}$ range from 17000 - 25000 K, where optical metal…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2012-09-27 Detlev Koester , Boris Gänsicke , Jonathan Girven , Jay Farihi

We report the discovery of excess K-band radiation from a massive DAZ white dwarf star, GD362. Combining infrared photometric and spectroscopic observations, we show that the excess radiation cannot be explained by a stellar or substellar…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Mukremin Kilic , Ted von Hippel , S. K. Leggett , D. E. Winget

Practically all known planet hosts will evolve into white dwarfs, and large parts of their planetary systems will survive this transition - the same is true for the solar system beyond the orbit of Mars. Spectroscopy of white dwarfs…

Hydrogen atmosphere white dwarfs with metal lines, so-called DAZs, require external accretion of material to explain the presence of weak metal line absorption in their photospheres. The source of this material is currently unknown, but…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-06-23 J. H. Debes , S. Sigurdsson , B. Hansen

We report Spitzer Space Telescope photometry of eleven externally-polluted white dwarfs. Of the nine stars for which we have IRAC photometry, we find that GD 40, GD 133 and PG 1015+161 each has an infrared excess that can be understood as…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-06-23 M. Jura , J. Farihi , B. Zuckerman

The atmospheres of a large proportion of white dwarf stars are polluted by heavy elements that are expected to sink out of visible layers on short timescales. This has been interpreted as a signature of ongoing accretion of debris from…

Binary stars containing a white dwarf and a main-sequence star, WDMS binaries, can be used to study a wide range of aspects of stellar astrophysics. We build a magnitude-limited sample of unresolved WDMS binaries from Gaia DR3 to enlarge…

White dwarfs whose atmospheres are polluted by terrestrial-like planetary debris have become a powerful and unique tool to study evolved planetary systems. This paper presents results for an unbiased Spitzer IRAC search for circumstellar…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-03-20 M. Rocchetto , J. Farihi , B. T. Gaensicke , C. Bergfors

White dwarf stars have been used for decades as precise and accurate age indicators. This work presents a test of the reliability of white dwarf total ages when spectroscopic observations are available. We conduct follow-up spectroscopy of…

We present an overview of the sample of northern hemisphere white dwarfs within 40 pc of the Sun detected from $Gaia$ Data Release 2 (DR2). We find that 521 sources are spectroscopically confirmed degenerate stars, 111 of which were first…

Discovery and characterisation of black holes (BHs), neutron stars (NSs), and white dwarfs (WDs) with detached luminous companions (LCs) in wide orbits are exciting because they are important test beds for dark remnant (DR) formation…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2023-07-12 Anindya Ganguly , Prasanta K. Nayak , Sourav Chatterjee

Circumstellar disks of planetary debris are now known or suspected to closely orbit hundreds of white dwarf stars. To date, both data and theory support disks that are entirely contained within the preceding giant stellar radii, and hence…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2016-04-12 J. Farihi

We report the discovery of two directly imaged, giant planet candidates orbiting the metal-rich DAZ white dwarfs WD 1202-232 and WD 2105-82. JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) data on these two stars show a nearby resolved source at a…

The current picture painted by the observations of circumstellar dust at white dwarfs, and the consequent atmospheric pollution, is of a surviving planetary system. This chapter recounts in detail both the discovery and empirical…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-03-19 J. Farihi

We present the Planetary Enriched White Dwarf Database (PEWDD), a collection of published photospheric abundances of white dwarfs accreting planetary debris alongside additional information relevant to metal-enrichment and the presence of…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2024-11-27 Jamie Williams , Boris Gaensicke , Andrew Swan , Mairi O'Brien , Paula Izquierdo , Anna-Maria Cutolo , Tim Cunningham

We present the first discoveries of the double-lined double white dwarf (DBL) survey that targets over-luminous sources with respect to the canonical white dwarf cooling sequence according to a set of well-defined criteria. The primary goal…

(Abridged) We present the results of the first unbiased survey for metal pollution among H-atmosphere (DA) white dwarfs with cooling ages of 20-200 Myr and 17000K < Teff < 27000K, using HST COS in the far UV between 1130 and 1435 A. The…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2014-06-04 Detlev Koester , Boris T. Gänsicke , Jay Farihi

Double white dwarf binaries are an important remnant of binary evolution as they are possible type Ia supernova progenitors and strong sources of gravitational waves in the low-frequency regime. The double-lined double white dwarf (DBL)…

Compact Galactic binaries where at least one member is a white dwarf or neutron star constitute the majority of individually detectable sources for future low-frequency space-based gravitational-wave (GW) observatories; they also form an…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-03 Samaya Nissanke , Michele Vallisneri , Gijs Nelemans , Thomas A. Prince

We present a catalogue of 62 polluted white dwarfs observed by the 9th Low-Resolution Data Release of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST LRS DR9v1; R$\approx$1,800) and the Early Data Release 3 (EDR3) of…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2023-10-31 Mariona Badenas-Agusti , Andrew Vanderburg , Simon Blouin , Patrick Dufour , Javier Viaña , Sara Seager , Sharon X. Wang