Finding Planets in the Stellar Graveyard: A Faint Companion Search of White Dwarfs with NICMOS

Computer Science

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Hst Proposal Id #9834 Ism And Circumstellar Matter

Scientific paper

We propose to do a deep search for substellar objects in orbit around white dwarfs with the newly refurbished NICMOS camera as part of the PI's doctoral thesis work. Direct imaging of planets around main sequence stars is difficult due to the large contrast ratio, a problem which is much less severe for companions to white dwarfs. White dwarfs are not usually considered in planet searches but recent theoretical work and observations are motivating new searches for planetary systems and dust disks around DAZ white dwarfs. We propose to conduct the search with the NIC2 coronagraph to find resolved companions and do photometry to search for unresolved companions through Near-IR excesses. We estimate that the survey will be sensitive to brown dwarfs, high mass jovian planets, and dust disks. By probing a wide range of orbital separations and companion masses, this survey will help to answer questions about the brown dwarf desert, common envelope evolution, and planet formation. HST and NICMOS provide a unique capability to do this search, as no ground based observatory with AO can adequately search for faint companions as close and with such high contrast.

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