Paper Cake is a great tradition our group has mugged from astronomers at the University of Warwick. During Paper Cake, you are encouraged to bake a cake and share it along with a discussion of a new paper posted to arXiv. Here is a celebration of a recent BUWD paper on 6 Mar 2026!
In March 2026, a manuscript led by graduate student and BUWD member Stefan Arseneau (Arseneau, Hermes, Camisassa, Raddi & Bauer 2026) was accepted laying the foundations to constrain the envelope structure of white dwarfs using gravitational redshifts. The hydrogen envelope mass in most white dwarfs is poorly constrained but critically affects the inferred masses and […]
In February 2026, a manuscript led by graduate student and BUWD member Lou Baya Ould Rouis (Ould Rouis, Hermes, Guidry et al. 2026) was accepted which we hope will change the way we think about some white dwarf merger remnants. Ultramassive white dwarfs in the Gaia “Q branch” exhibit multi-Gyr cooling delays, likely linked to […]
In August 2025, a manuscript led by graduate student and BUWD member Joseph Guidry (Guidry, Vanderbosch, Hermes et al. 2025) was accepted which announced the discovery of deep, irregular, periodic transits from rocky exoplanetary debris towards the white dwarf ZTF J1944+4557. This retired star dims by more than 30% roughly every five hours, as clumps […]
In August 2025, a manuscript led by graduate student and BUWD member Stefan Arseneau (Arseneau, Hermes, Zakamska et al. 2025) was accepted which showed that substantial biases (5-15 km/s) exist in low-resolution radial velocity measurements, indicating that all the physics of line formation in high-density plasmas is not fully accounted for in state-of-the-art white dwarf […]
In August 2025, a manuscript led by Snehalata Sahu at the University of Warwick and including members of the BUWD group (Sahu et al. 2025) announced the discovery of carbon in the atmosphere of an otherwise normal-looking hot hydrogen-rich white dwarf, a tell-tale sign of a merger in the history of the system. The discovery […]
In November 2024, a manuscript led by graduate student and BUWD member Lou Baya Ould Rouis (Ould Rouis, Hermes, Gaensicke et al. 2024) was accepted which showed that the most massive white dwarfs (>0.8 solar masses) show metal pollution significantly less frequently than more normal-mass white dwarfs. Specifically, just 11% of white dwarfs that begin […]
A story we ❤️about how exploring the Universe can re-ignite passion. And we don't mind that it's about looking at our white dwarf spectra in @jjhermes.bsky.social group 🤩🔭 www.bu.edu/articles/202… [image or embed] — Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (@sdssurveys.bsky.social) December 12, 2024 at 3:58 PM BU White Dwarf researcher Ariyana Bonab was featured in a November […]
In June 2024, a manuscript led by graduate student and BUWD member Joseph Guidry (Guidry, Hermes, De et al. 2024) took a look at infrared variability of white dwarfs as seen over many years from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope, discovering dozens of new infrared-variable white dwarfs that are likely to be […]
Massive congratulations to Dr. Tyler Heintz, who successfully defended his PhD dissertation on Tuesday July 23, 2024! Tyler has been at BU throughout the entire history of the BUWD research group, and has become expert in the reliability of white dwarf cosmochronology (age-dating white dwarf stars).