{"id":339,"date":"2022-09-23T16:36:34","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T20:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/?p=339"},"modified":"2024-12-20T16:22:14","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T21:22:14","slug":"a-hidden-white-dwarf-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/2022\/09\/23\/a-hidden-white-dwarf-found\/","title":{"rendered":"A hidden white dwarf found"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 624px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/buwd\/files\/2022\/09\/Smith-OMC.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"614\" height=\"409\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-287\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Changes in the arrival time of pulsations (top) of the 342-s pulsation period in the stripped red giant BPM 36430, along with residuals after subtracting the best-fitting sinusoid from the data (bottom). The data reveal that this stripped red giant is being orbited by an unseen, cool, white dwarf that is at least 42% as massive as the Sun (credit <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2209.09909\">Smith et al. 2022<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In September 2022, a manuscript led by undergraduate student at High Point University, Bryce Smith, and including members of the BUWD group has been published (<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2209.09909\">Smith, Barlow, Rosenthal, Hermes &#038; Schaffenroth 2022<\/a><\/strong>), which announces the discovery of an unseen, cool white dwarf using the stable pulsations of a stripped red giant star. This work implements the same timing method used to find the first exoplanets around a pulsar &#8212; looking for light-travel-time changes in an object with a steady pulsation period. The discovery was confirmed with spectroscopy showing the star really is wobbling from an unseen companion. The pulsation-timing changes were first discovered by a high-school student working with the BUWD group, Ben Rosenthal, who joined us as a RISE intern in July 2021; Ben is now an undergraduate at Yale University. The work has been <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2209.09909\">accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal<\/a>; a short thread on the discovery can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jotajotahermes\/status\/1573408980751491074?s=20&#038;t=_Du08TVul3MzzoR7GmLnmQ\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In September 2022, a manuscript led by undergraduate student at High Point University, Bryce Smith, and including members of the BUWD group has been published (Smith, Barlow, Rosenthal, Hermes &#038; Schaffenroth 2022), which announces the discovery of an unseen, cool white dwarf using the stable pulsations of a stripped red giant star. This work implements [&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\/339"}],"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=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/buwd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}