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The low-mass white dwarf companion to beta Crateris

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journal contribution
posted on 2017-01-05, 10:21 authored by M. R. Burleigh, M. A. Barstow, K. J. Schenker, A. I. Sills, G. A. Wynn, P. D. Dobbie, S. A. Good
We present FUSE H Lyman series spectroscopy of the hot white dwarf companion to the 4th magnitude A1=III star Beta-Crt, which shows that it has an unusually low mass, M(WD) = 0:43 M(Sun) and has almost certainly evolved through binary interaction. This system could be a longsought remnant of Algol-type evolution, although radial velocity measurements appear to show that the pair are not close. Instead, micro-variations in the proper motion of Beta-Crt as measured by Hipparcos suggest that the period could be as high as ,10 yr. However, a lowmass white dwarf in a system with a period >=3 yr is difficult to explain by conventional models for binary evolution. We speculate on alternative models for the evolution of this system which involve an eccentric binary or multiple components.

Funding

This work was supported by PPARC, UK

History

Citation

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2001, 327 (4), pp. 1158-1164 (7)

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING/Department of Physics and Astronomy

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP), Royal Astronomical Society

issn

0035-8711

eissn

1365-2966

Available date

2017-01-05

Publisher version

http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/327/4/1158

Language

en