Mean Pulsation Period of Cool White Dwarf Variables Gauges Stellar Temperature

Details Mean Pulsation Period of Cool White Dwarf Variables Gauges Stellar Temperature Mean Pulsation Period of Cool White Dwarf Variables Gauges Stellar Temperature

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006aas...20923003m&link_type=abstract

2007 AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, American Astronomical Society Meeting 209, #230.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society,

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The coolest class of pulsating white dwarf stars comprises of hydrogen atmosphere variables called the ZZ Ceti stars. The mean pulsation period of ZZ Ceti stars increases with decreasing effective temperature as we traverse from the hot to the cool edge of the instability strip (see Clemens 1993, Kanaan et al. 2002, Mukadam et al. 2006). This well-established correlation between the mean pulsation period and spectroscopic temperature suggests that the mean period could be utilized as a tool to measure the relative temperature of the star independent of spectroscopy. Measuring the pulsation periods of a ZZ Ceti star is a simple, model-independent, and straight forward process as opposed to a spectroscopic determination of its temperature. Internal uncertainties in determining the spectroscopic temperature of a ZZ Ceti star are at least 200K, 15% of the 1350K width of the instability strip. The uncertainties in determining the mean period arise mostly from amplitude modulation in the pulsation spectrum and are smaller than 100s for 91% of the ZZ Ceti stars, <8% of the 1300s width of the instability strip. In principle this implies that for 90% of the ZZ Ceti stars, the average uncertainty in determining the location of the star within the instability strip decreases by a factor of two in utilizing the mean pulsation period as a temperature gauge rather than traditional spectroscopy. Presently we only claim that the relative temperatures of ZZ Ceti stars derived by using the mean pulsation period are certainly as good as and perhaps about 15% better than spectroscopy. Support for this work was provided by NASA through the Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF-01175.01-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS 5-26555.

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