White dwarf variability with gPhoton: pulsators

Tucker, M. A.; Fleming, Scott W.; Pelisoli, Ingrid; Romero, A. D.; Bell, Keaton J.; Caton, D. B.; Debes, John H.; Montgomery, M. H.; Thompson, Susan E.; Koester, D.; Million, Chase; Shiao, Bernie

doi:10.1093/mnras/stx3297

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 110 publications

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“…GALEX photometry has been used previously in co-added images (e.g., Leroy et al 2019;Bracco et al 2020) and to study short-term intra-visit stellar variability (e.g., Boudreaux et al 2017;Tucker et al 2018;Rowan et al 2019) but never to our knowledge used for long-term monitoring as we do here. Thus, we want to include as much photometry as possible without sacrificing photometric quality and stability.…”

Section: B Photometric Precision and Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Late-Onset Circumstellar Medium Interactions are Rare: An Unbiased GALEX View of Type Ia Supernovae

Dubay,

Tucker,

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Using ultraviolet (UV) light curves we constrain the circumstellar environments of 1080 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) within z < 0.5 from archival Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX ) observations. All SNe Ia are required to have pre-and post-explosion GALEX observations to ensure adequate subtraction of the host-galaxy flux. Using the late-time GALEX observations we look for the UV excess expected from any interaction between the SN ejecta and circumstellar material (CSM). Four SNe Ia are detected near maximum light and we compare the GALEX photometry to archival data, but we find none of our targets show convincing evidence of CSM interaction. A recent Hubble Space Telescope (HST ) survey estimates that ∼ 6% of SNe Ia may interact with distant CSM, but statistical inferences are complicated by the small sample size and selection effects. By injecting model light curves into our data and then recovering them, we constrain a broad range of CSM interactions based on the CSM interaction start time and the maximum luminosity. Combining our GALEX non-detections with the HST results, we constrain occurrence of late-onset CSM interaction among SNe Ia with moderate CSM interaction, similar to that observed in PTF11kx, to f CSM 7.3% between 0 − 500 days after discovery and 3.1% between 500 − 1000 days after discovery at 90% confidence. For weaker CSM interactions similar to SN 2015cp, we obtain limits of 14% and 4.9%, respectively, for the same time ranges.

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Section: B Photometric Precision and Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Late-Onset Circumstellar Medium Interactions are Rare: An Unbiased GALEX View of Type Ia Supernovae

Dubay,

Tucker,

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…But their true interiors can be more fully explored using the UV, where the pulsation amplitudes can be an order of magnitude higher. Some work has been done to extract pulsations from archival GALEX UV data (Boudreaux et al 2017;Tucker et al 2018;Rowan et al 2019), but these efforts have been limited by the 30-minute maximum continuous baseline of the space telescope. UV observations are also crucial for tracking rapid evolution of pulsating WDs through rare dwarf novae outbursts in cataclysmic variables, where the accretion disk dominates in the optical (Szkody et al 2012).…”

Section: Hot Star Pulsationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A High-Cadence UV-Optical Telescope Suite On The Lunar South Pole

Fleming,

Barclay,

Bell

et al. 2020

Preprint

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We propose a suite of telescopes be deployed as part of the Artemis III human-crewed expedition to the lunar south pole, able to collect wide-field simultaneous far-ultraviolet (UV), near-UV, and optical band images with a fast cadence (10 seconds) of a single part of the sky for several hours continuously. Wide-field, high-cadence monitoring in the optical regime has provided new scientific breakthroughs in the fields of exoplanets, stellar astrophysics, and astronomical transients. Similar observations cannot be made in the UV from within Earth's atmosphere, but are possible from the Moon's surface. The proposed observations will enable studies of atmospheric escape from close-in giant exoplanets, exoplanet magnetospheres, the physics of stellar flare formation, the impact of stellar flares on exoplanet habitability, the internal stellar structure of hot, compact stars, and the early-time evolution of supernovae and novae to better understand their progenitors and formation mechanisms.

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“…The catalog is further reduced by selecting sources with GALEX exposure time >1000s reported by gPhoton to ensure adequate http://dev.montrealwhitedwarfdatabase.org/ tables-and-charts.html timescales for detectable variability. After applying these cuts and merging the separate catalogs, the final target list consists of 23,676 WDs, the largest photometric ultraviolet WD survey compiled for a single study (previous largest 320, Tucker et al 2018).…”

Section: Catalog Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Space-based photometry allows for UV observations, though these studies often use much shorter observational baselines. Time-tagged light curves from the GALEX space telescope, which observes in two UV bands, was first used for the detection of WD pulsations by Tucker et al (2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detections and constraints on white dwarf variability from time-series GALEX observations

Rowan

Tucker

Shappee

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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We search for photometric variability in more than 23,000 known and candidate white dwarfs, the largest ultraviolet survey compiled for a single study of white dwarfs. We use gPhoton, a publicly available calibration/reduction pipeline, to generate time-series photometry of white dwarfs observed by GALEX. By implementing a system of weighted metrics, we select sources with variability due to pulsations and eclipses. Although GALEX observations have short baselines (≤ 30 min), we identify intrinsic variability in sources as faint as Gaia G = 20 mag. With our ranking algorithm, we identify 49 new variable white dwarfs (WDs) in archival GALEX observations. We detect 41 new pulsators: 37 have hydrogen-dominated atmospheres (DAVs), including one possible massive DAV, and four are helium-dominated pulsators (DBVs). We also detect eight new eclipsing systems; five are new discoveries, and three were previously known spectroscopic binaries. We perform synthetic injections of the light curve of WD 1145+017, a system with known transiting debris, to test our ability to recover similar systems. We find that the 3σ maximum occurrence rate of WD 1145+017-like transiting objects is ≤ 0.5%.

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White dwarf variability with gPhoton: pulsators

Cited by 7 publications

References 110 publications

Late-Onset Circumstellar Medium Interactions are Rare: An Unbiased GALEX View of Type Ia Supernovae

Late-Onset Circumstellar Medium Interactions are Rare: An Unbiased GALEX View of Type Ia Supernovae

A High-Cadence UV-Optical Telescope Suite On The Lunar South Pole

Detections and constraints on white dwarf variability from time-series GALEX observations

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