The Pulsating Helium-atmosphere White Dwarfs. I. New DBVs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Creators
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1.
California Institute of Technology
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2.
Boston University
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3.
The University of Texas at Austin
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4.
University of Washington
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Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
Abstract
We present a dedicated search for new pulsating helium-atmosphere (DBV) white dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using the McDonald 2.1 m Otto Struve Telescope. In total we observed 55 DB and DBA white dwarfs with spectroscopic temperatures between 19,000 and 35,000 K. We find 19 new DBVs and place upper limits on variability for the remaining 36 objects. In combination with previously known DBVs, we use these objects to provide an update to the empirical extent of the DB instability strip. With our sample of new DBVs, the red edge is better constrained, as we nearly double the number of DBVs known between 20,000 and 24,000 K. We do not find any new DBVs hotter than PG 0112+104, the current hottest DBV is at T_(eff) ≈ 31,000 K, but do find pulsations in four DBVs with temperatures between 27,000 and 30,000 K, improving empirical constraints on the poorly defined blue edge. We investigate the ensemble pulsation properties of all currently known DBVs, finding that the weighted mean period and total pulsation power exhibit trends with effective temperature that are qualitatively similar to the pulsating hydrogen-atmosphere white dwarfs.
Additional Information
© 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 2021 August 20; revised 2022 January 7; accepted 2022 January 11; published 2022 March 11. We thank the referee for their insightful comments that helped improve this work. Z.P.V., D.E.W., and M.H.M. acknowledge support from the United States Department of Energy under grant DE-SC0010623, the National Science Foundation under grant AST-1707419, and the Wootton Center for Astrophysical Plasma Properties under the United States Department of Energy collaborative agreement DE-NA0003843. M.H.M. acknowledges support from the NASA ADAP program under grant 80NSSC20K0455. K.J.B. is supported by the National Science Foundation under Award AST-1903828. Data from McDonald Observatory were obtained with financial support from NASA K2 Cycle 5 grant 80NSSC18K0387 and WCAPP. S.O.K. acknowledges support from Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico—Brasil (CNPq), and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Rio Grande do Sul (FAPERGS) - Brasil. We thank McDonald Observatory and all of the observing support staff, who helped make these observations possible. Software: Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2018), iraf (National Optical Astronomy Observatories), Period04 (Lenz & Breger 2004), Wqed (Thompson & Mullally 2013), ccd_hsp (Kanaan et al. 2002), and the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) repositories.Attached Files
Published - Vanderbosch_2022_ApJ_927_158.pdf
Accepted Version - 2201.09893.pdf
Files
2201.09893.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 113908
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20220315-625605000
Related works
- Describes
- https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.09893 (URL)
Funding
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-SC0010623
- NSF
- AST-1707419
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-NA0003843
- NASA
- 80NSSC20K0455
- NSF
- AST-1903828
- NASA
- 80NSSC18K0387
- Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)
- Fundação de Amparo à pesquisa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul (FAPERGS)
- NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship
Dates
- Created
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2022-03-17Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2022-03-17Created from EPrint's last_modified field