A very hot, hydrogen-rich, white dwarf planetary nucleus

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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Abundance, Balmer Series, Helium, Hydrogen, Planetary Nebulae, Stellar Atmospheres, White Dwarf Stars, Charge Coupled Devices, Chronology, Distance, Imagery, Schmidt Telescopes, Size (Dimensions), Stellar Models, Stellar Spectrophotometry, Stellar Temperature

Scientific paper

We report new spectrophotometry and a detailed analysis of the DA white dwarf nucleus of the planetary nebula WDHS 1 (PK 197-6.1 deg). Based on model atmosphere fits to the Balmer line profiles, the possible Teff for this star ranges from 165,000 K if the helium abundance is zero to approximately 100,000 K if a marginally detectable abundance of N(He)/N(H) = 10-2 is present in the atmosphere; log approx. = 7.6 in either case. The nucleus of WDHS 1 is thus the hottest known high gravity star with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. We present CCD imaging of the nebulae showing this to have an angular extent of 22 min. At the distance (d) of 1.0 +/- 0.25 kpc estimated from the white dwarf analysis, WDHS 1 is one of the largest known planetary nebulae with a diameter of 6.4 (d/1 kpc) pc. The implied kinematic age of the nebulae is a few times 105 yr, which might be consistent with the post-Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) lifetime of the nucleus. We discuss the apparent paucity of objects such as the nucleus of WDHS 1 in comparison with their hydrogen-poor counterparts among planetary nuclei and field dwarfs.

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