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Full-Text Articles in Astrophysics and Astronomy

Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph Observations Of The Hot White Dwarf In The Close Binary Feige 24, Stephane Vennes, Elisha F. Polomski, Thierry Lanz, John R. Thorstensen Nov 2000

Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph Observations Of The Hot White Dwarf In The Close Binary Feige 24, Stephane Vennes, Elisha F. Polomski, Thierry Lanz, John R. Thorstensen

Dartmouth Scholarship

We obtained and analyzed two Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph spectra of the white dwarf in the DA plus dMe binary Feige 24. The spectra, obtained at orbital quadratures, provide new estimates of the white dwarf motion and gravitational redshift resulting in revised white dwarf parameters. An analysis of interstellar absorption lines reveals the presence of two clouds (+3.1 km s-1, +17.6 km s-1) in the line of sight toward Feige 24; one of these clouds (+17.6 km s-1) is identified with the "local cloud." A study of the Lyα H I and D I interstellar medium lines shows that …


The White Dwarf Cooling Age Of The Open Cluster Ngc 2420, Ted Von Hippel, Gerard Gilmore Sep 2000

The White Dwarf Cooling Age Of The Open Cluster Ngc 2420, Ted Von Hippel, Gerard Gilmore

Publications

We have used deep HST WFPC2 observations of two fields in NGC 2420 to produce a cluster color-magnitude diagram down to V ≈ 27. After imposing morphological selection criteria we find eight candidate white dwarfs in NGC 2420. Our completeness estimates indicate that we have found the terminus of the WD cooling sequence. We argue that the cluster distance modulus is likely to be close to 12.10 with E(B-V) = 0.04. With these parameters we find a white dwarf cooling age for NGC 2420 of 2.0 ± 0.20 (1 σ) Gyr. The 0.20 Gyr uncertainty includes errors in the photometry, …