Tomasz Nowakowski is a member of the physics.org community.
Astronomers have found 21 new high-probability white dwarfs using data from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope. There is a paper on the arXiv pre-print server.
White dwarfs are rare because of their low mass. One of the stars has a mass that is less than the sun's mass. These systems are thought to undergo mass loss during their evolution because it is assumed that such a low mass cannot be a result of single star evolution.
Finding new ELMWDs and studying them in detail is important to advance knowledge of stellar evolution. The nature of this phenomenon is predicted to be shed more light by some systems of this type.
More than 100 known candidate objects of this type were investigated by a team of astronomer led by Kun Wang of China West Normal University.
The researchers used the LAMOST DR8 database to find 136 ELMWD candidates and 12 known objects.
Wang's team looked at a total of 188 LAMOST low-resolution spectrum, 172 of which belonged to 136 ELMWD candidates and 16 of which were previously known. They were able to get atmospheric parameters andRVs for each LAMOST spectrum. Hot subdwarf stars and white dwarfs are some of the stars that the results show.
There are 21 new high-probability ELMWDs that agree to within a factor of 3. The researchers think that two of the newfound ELMWD candidates, J0338+4134 and J1129+, are very likely to be in a system with at least one ELMWD. Two new high-probability ELMWDs are the only ones that have more than one spectrum.
The astronomer found that J0338+4134 has a relatively high projected rotation. Further high-resolution follow up observations are needed to confirm this finding.
LAMOST can be used to search for and investigate new ELMWD.
RV's from multiple epochs will allow us to confirm their nature and get their physical parameters.
More information: Kun Wang et al, Extremely low-mass white dwarf stars observed in Gaia DR2 and LAMOST DR8. arXiv:2207.13401v1 [astro-ph.SR], arxiv.org/abs/2207.13401There is a science network.
Citation: Astronomers discover 21 new extremely low-mass white dwarf candidates (2022, August 3) retrieved 7 August 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-08-astronomers-extremely-low-mass-white-dwarf.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
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