{"id":286,"date":"2021-10-08T17:11:23","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T21:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/?p=286"},"modified":"2024-12-20T16:26:28","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T21:26:28","slug":"tess-watches-a-low-mass-white-dwarf-pulsate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/2021\/10\/08\/tess-watches-a-low-mass-white-dwarf-pulsate\/","title":{"rendered":"TESS watches a low-mass white dwarf pulsate"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 646px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/buwd\/files\/2021\/10\/gd278-tess-636x321.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"636\" height=\"321\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-287\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/files\/2021\/10\/gd278-tess-636x321.png 636w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/files\/2021\/10\/gd278-tess-768x387.png 768w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/files\/2021\/10\/gd278-tess.png 999w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 636px) 100vw, 636px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eight days of brightness changes as seen from <i>TESS<\/i> from the pulsating extremely low-mass white dwarf GD 278 (credit <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2110.02230\">Lopez et al. 2021<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In October 2021, former BUWD group member Isaac Lopez led a global collaboration (<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2110.02230\">Lopez, Hermes, Calcaferro et al. 2021<\/a><\/strong>) announcing the discovery, characterization with <i>TESS<\/i>, and asteroseismic modeling of the pulsations in the first extremely low-mass white dwarf observed from space: <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2110.02230\">GD 278<\/a>. Using a method to select variable white dwarfs from <i>Gaia<\/i> pioneered by our group, we first saw pulsations from McDonald Observatory in August 2019. We quickly secured <i>TESS<\/i> data (see above), producing some of the best data on a pulsating white dwarf ever collected. We matched the observed oscillation periods to theoretical models with multiple stellar evolution codes. This is now the lowest-mass white dwarf with a measured rotation rate. The work by Lopez, Hermes, Calcaferro et al. 2021 was accepted for publication and will <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2110.02230\">appear soon in the Astrophysical Journal<\/a>; a thread can be found here on Twitter: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jotajotahermes\/status\/1446514046027640839?s=20\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/jotajotahermes\/status\/1446514046027640839?s=20<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In October 2021, former BUWD group member Isaac Lopez led a global collaboration (Lopez, Hermes, Calcaferro et al. 2021) announcing the discovery, characterization with TESS, and asteroseismic modeling of the pulsations in the first extremely low-mass white dwarf observed from space: GD 278. Using a method to select variable white dwarfs from Gaia pioneered by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15801,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15801"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}