Work

Two White Dwarfs with Oxygen-Rich Atmospheres

Year: 2009

Type: article

Abstract: Stars Going Quietly or with a Bang Stars with masses seven to ten times the mass of the Sun, which can burn carbon in their cores at their end of their lives, may end up as oxygen-neon core white dwarfs or explode as core-collapse supernovae. The defining line between these two end products of stellar evolution is not well understood. Gänsicke et al. (p. 188 ; published online 12 November) identified two white dwarfs whose photospheric oxygen-to-carbon abundance ratio exceeds unity. Their low carbon abundance and their large quantity of oxygen imply that they are oxygen-neon white dwarfs that lost their hydrogen envelopes. As such, they may have evolved from stars at the borderline between stars that explode as supernova and stars that form white dwarfs.

Source: Science

DOI: 10.1126/science.1180228

Authors: B. T. Gänsicke, D. Koester, J. Girven, T. R. Marsh, D. Steeghs

Institutions: University of Warwick, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel

Language: English

Topic: Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: Science and Technology Facilities Council

Awards: Warwick Astronomy and Astrophysics Rolling Grant 2008-2013, The astrophysics of accretion in compact binaries