Related papers: Disks and Planets Around Massive White Dwarfs
Spitzer Space Telescope IRAC 3-8 micron and AKARI IRC 2-4 micron photometry are reported for ten white dwarfs with photospheric heavy elements; nine relatively cool stars with photospheric calcium, and one hotter star with a peculiar high…
The Gaia spacecraft presents an unprecedented opportunity to reveal the population of long period (a>1\,au) exoplanets orbiting stars across the H-R diagram, including white dwarfs. White dwarf planetary systems have played an important…
Nearly all known white dwarf planetary systems contain detectable rocky debris in the stellar photosphere. A glaring exception is the young and still evolving white dwarf WD J0914+1914, which instead harbours a giant planet and a disc of…
Debris disks are the dust disks found around ~20% of nearby main sequence stars in far-IR surveys. They can be considered as descendants of protoplanetary disks or components of planetary systems, providing valuable information on…
Infrared excesses due to dusty disks have been observed orbiting white dwarfs with effective temperatures between 7200 K and 25000 K, suggesting that the rate of tidal disruption of minor bodies massive enough to create a coherent disk…
We present a simple method for identifying candidate white dwarf systems with dusty exoplanetary debris based on a single temperature blackbody model fit to the infrared excess. We apply this technique to a sample of Southern Hemisphere…
Planetary materials orbiting white dwarf stars reveal the ultimate fate of the planets of the Solar System and all known transiting exoplanets. Observed metal pollution and infrared excesses from debris disks support that planetary systems…
We demonstrate that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can detect infrared (IR) excess from the blended light spectral energy distribution of spatially unresolved terrestrial exoplanets orbiting nearby white dwarfs. We find that JWST is…
Previous work has demonstrated that the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) has the capability to detect transiting planets around main sequence stars in relatively short ($<$ 20 days) periods and using standard algorithms for transit…
The suite of over 60 known planetary debris discs which orbit white dwarfs, along with detections of multiple minor planets in these systems, motivate investigations about the migration properties of planetesimals embedded within the discs.…
We have carried out $JHK_s$ imaging of 12 white dwarf debris disk candidates from the WIRED SDSS DR7 catalog, aiming to confirm or rule out disks among these sources. On the basis of positional identification and the flux density spectra,…
We present the discovery of strongly variable emission lines from a gaseous disc around the DA white dwarf SDSS J1617+1620, a star previously found to have an infrared excess indicative of a dusty debris disc formed by the tidal disruption…
The detection of lower mass planets now being reported via radial velocity and microlensing surveys suggests that they may be ubiquitous. If missions such as Kepler are able to confirm this, the detection and study of rocky planets via…
Archival data from the WISE satellite reveals infrared flux variations of tens of per cent around numerous dusty white dwarfs. Data spanning more than seven years reveal more than half of known systems are varying in the 3.4 micron band,…
The interstellar thick disks of galaxies contain not only gas, but significant quantities of dust. Most of our knowledge of extraplanar dust in disk galaxies comes from direct broadband optical imaging of these systems, wherein the dust is…
Eighteen years after an infrared excess was discovered associated with the white dwarf G29-38, we report ground-based measurements (JHKL'N') with mJy-level sensitivity of GD 362 that show it to be a second single white dwarf with an…
Debris discs are dusty belts of planetesimals around main-sequence stars, similar to the asteroid and Kuiper belts in our solar system. The planetesimals cannot be observed directly, yet they produce detectable dust in mutual collisions.…
We present ISAAC spectroscopy and ISAAC, UKIDSS and Spitzer Space Telescope broad-band photometry of SDSS J1228+1040 -- a white dwarf for which evidence of a gaseous metal-rich circumstellar disk has previously been found from optical…
Infrared (IR) excess emission around white dwarfs (WDs) is commonly attributed to circumstellar debris disks and/or low-mass companions, providing a unique window into the evolution of planetary systems and binary evolution after the…
Extensive photometric stellar surveys show that many main sequence stars show emission at infrared and longer wavelengths that is in excess of the stellar photosphere; this emission is thought to arise from circumstellar dust. The presence…