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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Cosmology, Relativity, and Gravity

2019

Stars

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The Ages Of The Thin Disk, Thick Disk, And The Halo From Nearby White Dwarfs, Mukremin Kilic, Ted Von Hippel, Jeffrey A. Munn, Hugh C. Harris, James W. Liebert, Et Al. Aug 2019

The Ages Of The Thin Disk, Thick Disk, And The Halo From Nearby White Dwarfs, Mukremin Kilic, Ted Von Hippel, Jeffrey A. Munn, Hugh C. Harris, James W. Liebert, Et Al.

Ted von Hippel

We present a detailed analysis of the white dwarf luminosity functions derived from the local 40 pc sample and the deep proper motion catalog of Munn et al. (2014, 2017). Many of the previous studies ignored the contribution of thick disk white dwarfs to the Galactic disk luminosity function, which results in an erronous age measurement. We demonstrate that the ratio of thick/thin disk white dwarfs is roughly 20% in the local sample. Simultaneously fitting for both disk components, we derive ages of 6.8-7.0 Gyr for the thin disk and 8.7 ± 0.1 Gyr for the thick disk from the …


Magnetospherically-Trapped Dust And A Possible Model For The Unusual Transits At Wd1145+017, J. Farihi, Ted Von Hippel, J. E. Pringle Aug 2019

Magnetospherically-Trapped Dust And A Possible Model For The Unusual Transits At Wd1145+017, J. Farihi, Ted Von Hippel, J. E. Pringle

Ted von Hippel

The rapidly evolving dust and gas extinction observed towardsWD1145+017 has opened a real-time window onto the mechanisms for destruction-accretion of planetary bodies onto white dwarf stars, and has served to underline the importance of considering the dynamics of dust particles around such objects. Here it is argued that the interaction between (charged) dust grains and the stellar magnetic field is an important ingredient in understanding the physical distribution of infrared emitting particles in the vicinity of such white dwarfs. These ideas are used to suggest a possible model for WD 1145+017 in which the unusual transit shapes are caused by …