A brown dwarf mass donor in an accreting binary

Details A brown dwarf mass donor in an accreting binary A brown dwarf mass donor in an accreting binary

2006-12-08

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0612220v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

10 pages, 2 figures. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for personal use, n

Scientific paper

10.1126/science.1133333

A long standing and unverified prediction of binary star evolution theory is the existence of a population of white dwarfs accreting from sub-stellar donor stars. Such systems ought to be common, but the difficulty of finding them, combined with the challenge of detecting the donor against the light from accretion means that no donor star to date has a measured mass below the hydrogen burning limit. Here we apply a technique which allows us to reliably measure the mass of the unseen donor star in eclipsing systems. We are able to identify a brown dwarf donor star, with a mass of 0.052+/-0.002 Msun. The relatively high mass of the donor star for its orbital period suggests that current evolutionary models may underestimate the radii of brown dwarfs.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

A brown dwarf mass donor in an accreting binary does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with A brown dwarf mass donor in an accreting binary, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and A brown dwarf mass donor in an accreting binary will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-572173