Pulsating White Dwarfs

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1 Pulsating White Dwarfs A Paper Written for the Iowa State University Summer 2000 REU Program By Drew Goettler Abstract Pulsating white dwarf stars are a special subclass of white dwarfs, and they are very useful tools for studying the interiors of stars. As the interior of the white dwarf changes and oscillates, the light signal from the star will pulsate at numerous frequencies. By determining the frequencies at which the star pulsates and using these as boundary conditions in stellar models, astronomers can determine the interior properties of white dwarfs. This summer I was involved in using data from the Whole Earth Telescope and CCD images to determine the frequencies at which two different white dwarf stars pulsate. Background on Pulsating White Dwarfs A white dwarf star is the final resting stage of 98 % of all stars (Kawaler A 1). The size of a white dwarf is comparable to Earth, but its mass is on the same order as the Sun. To keep such a dense star from collapsing, the core of the star, which is composed of carbon and oxygen, becomes electron degenerate. Surrounding the core is a thin layer of helium and hydrogen. This outer layer contains about.01% of the white dwarf s mass, and it extends about 30 miles below the surface (Kawaler B 133). Without the thin blanket of hydrogen and helium, the white dwarf would cool very rapidly. page 1 7/31/00

2 As the white dwarf cools, the release of heat is comparable to a pot of boiling water with a lid on it. As steam tries to escape, it causes the lid on the pot to move up and down. Instead of the outer layer of the star moving up and down, the outer layer will vary in luminosity due to nonradial pulsations/oscillations in the interior of the star. The changes in luminosity are on the order of millimagnitudes (11 millimagnitudes equals a 1% change in brightness), but the oscillations are observable. These observable oscillations are due to g-modes, which are modes produced by the restoring force of buoyancy (Winget 216). Not all white dwarfs pulsate, though. Astronomers have determined four locations on the white dwarf branch of the H-R diagram where white dwarfs pulsate (Figure 1) (Nather 374). When looking at pulsating white dwarf, longer is better. As the star pulsates, the brightness of the star plotted versus time creates a graph that looks sinusoidal, and the graph is called a light curve. The top of figure 2 shows an example light curve. Looking at a pulsating star from a single location can only yield a light curve that is at most about 8 hours long, but this is not long enough to resolve a light curve from a star into all of its components. In order to get a light curve long enough, astronomers make use of the Whole Earth Telescope (WET). WET is a collaboration of many observatories from around the world, and it allows astronomers to get light curves that are days long, not just hours long. Figure 3 shows a map of participating WET sites. As a star sets on one observatory, another observatory to the west begins to track the star. Once a site has completed a night of observation, the site sends its data to the headquarters of WET located at ISU. At the headquarters each set of data, or run, is processed right away. Due page 2 7/31/00

3 to the huge collaboration needed to do a WET run, runs are only made once or twice a year. The data collected, however, is worth the effort. Why Study Pulsating White Dwarfs By studying pulsating white dwarfs, astronomers can determine what the interior of a white dwarf actually looks like. Once they know what the inside looks like, astronomers have a better idea of how the stars cool. By knowing how the star cools, astronomers can get better estimates of the ages of white dwarfs. As mentioned before, 98% of all stars will eventually become white dwarfs, including our Sun. There are two main reasons why pulsating white dwarfs are very useful to look at. One reason they are useful to look at is the number of modes at which they pulsate: white dwarf stars pulsate at more frequencies than other types of pulsating stars. Also, the structure of a white dwarf is much simpler than other stars. A cooling lump of gas is a lot easier to model than a fusion reaction. Think of a white dwarf as a piano with only 3 strings and 100 constraints on how to tune it, and then think a star fusing material as a piano with 100 strings and only 3 constraints. It is be much easier for a piano tuner to tune the 3-stringed piano than the other type. Astronomers who study pulsating white dwarfs could also be considered star pathologists. Instead of an astronomer looking at a dead body to determine the lifestyle of the person and the cause of death, an astronomer looks at a dead star. Based on what the make-up of a star was before it died the composition of its corpse (a pulsating white dwarf) will tell astronomers what the star was like when it was fusing material. page 3 7/31/00

4 What I Did The data I looked at this summer was taken from a pulsating white dwarf star with a helium rich outer layer called EC , and it has a visual magnitude of Figure 4 shows a finder chart for EC The data was acquired between June 30, 1997 and July 13, 1997 on the WET run called XCov 15. To reduce the data taken with the Whole Earth Telescope, I used a program call QED. With this program, I looked at each individual run, and on some nights there was more than one run. Each run contained two light curves: a light curve of the target star and light curve of a comparison star. To get the two light curves for the individual runs, a 2-channel photometer was used. The top of figure 2 shows a sample light curve with the target star above the light curve of the comparison star. The first procedure I did involved taking out garbage points from each curve. By marking points as garbage, they are taken out of the light curve and are not used in determining the Fourier transform of the light curve. Points can be labeled as garbage due to guide or aperture checks, clouds coming between the telescope and the stars being observed, or if an observer bangs his/her head on the telescope while observing. Basically, garbage points are points that should not be associated with the actual light curve from the star. Once the garbage points were marked, I then marked sky points. Sky points are parts of the light curve where the observer checked the sky s brightness. Once all of the sky points are marked, QED linearly connects all of the sky points to produce a curve that will eventually be subtracted from the light curves of the target and comparison stars. To aid me in determining garbage and sky points, each observer kept a log for each individual run. page 4 7/31/00

5 After I had marked garbage and sky points, I ran a number of commands that corrected for dead time, extracted the sky readings, prepared the sky channel for subtraction, subtracted the sky from each channel, and corrected for extinction. I also ran commands called bridging and function fitting on each of the runs. By bridging a run, gaps in the light curve were linearly connected with artificial data points (The question of whether or not to bridge is debatable. By bridging a run, you are creating points on the light curve that did not originate from the star and possibly creating false periods in the star s light curve). With the function fitting command, a low order polynomial is divided out of the light curve. The removal of a low order polynomial from the light curve is done to remove low level fluctuations that other commands such as extinction might have missed. By doing all of this data reduction, I was trying to reproduce what the light curve looked like before entering our atmosphere. During the next step of the data reduction process, I used a program called qplot to plot both of the light curves and also produce a fast Fourier transform for each run. The bottom of figure 2 shows the Fourier transforms of the two light curves at the top of figure 2. This allowed me to see if I had missed any garbage or sky points or if the curve needed to smoothed out more. Once all of the runs had been individually reduced, they needed to be fit all together. When putting together 27 different runs from 13 different nights, time becomes a crucial element. Due to the Earth s constant movement through the solar system, the center of the solar system was used as the point of reference for time. This time correction is referred to as the bari-centric time correction, and it removes any time aliases due to the movement of Earth. page 5 7/31/00

6 Once all of the runs were combined, I used a program called pspec to create a Fourier transform of the entire Xcov 15 run (Figure 5). From this point on, my goal was to distinguish real peaks from false peaks in the Fourier transform. First, I removed the largest peak in terms of amplitude from the Fourier transform. I then performed a least squares fit on the peak. Next, I removed that peak and any of its aliases from the original Fourier transform, and I also removed its period from the light curve. With that period removed I ran a Fourier transform on the new light curve, and I took out the next highest peak. I repeated this process until the graph of the Fourier transform was nothing but noise. With this process I marked sixteen peaks, or frequencies, in the Fourier transform. Figure 6 shows a Fourier transform with the 16 peaks marked. Using these sixteen peaks, I looked for any linear combinations of the frequencies. Does the frequency of peak A plus the frequency of peak B equal the frequency of peak C? Once the true peaks had been identified, my job was done. It is then left up to someone else to use fit these frequencies to a stellar model. CCD Experiment For part of the summer I was involved with testing the performance of a CCD camera used in high-speed photometry. The camera was mounted on the 26-inch telescope at Fick Observatory. Between the 6 th and 10 th of July, over 1300 images of the pulsating sub-dwarf star KPD1930 were taken, and each image had an exposure time of five seconds. My job was to reduce the CCD images and extract the light curve, which was then used for time series analysis. To reduce the CCD images, I used a program called IRAF. Most of the images were of the target star and its surroundings (figure 7), but flat field and dark field images page 6 7/31/00

7 were also taken periodically. Dark fields are images taken with the shutter of the camera closed, and they show any electronic noise on the CCD camera and also any hotspots. The flat field images are images of an equally lit out of focus area, and the images show obstructions such as dirt on the CCD lens cover and mirrors. From the dark fields and flat fields, I created one dark field image and one flat field image. I then subtracted the dark field from each of the images and divided out the flat field for each image. Once the images had been corrected using the darks and flats, I began to extract data. From each image I extracted flux, sky reading, and total counts for the target star and eight comparison stars. The data I extracted is currently being used for pulsation analysis. Results The results of my research are shown in Tables 1-5. Table 1 lists in increasing frequency the 16 frequencies I took out of the Fourier transform of the light curve from EC Tables 2 and 3 list what peaks from the Fourier transform are combinations of other peaks. Table 3 also lists a triplet in the Fourier transform. Table 4 lists two possible families of peaks. They are listed as families because those groups of peaks appeared to combine together only with others in their family. Table 6 is a list of all the independent frequencies. These are the frequencies that would be used as constraints in a stellar model. Conclusion The goals for this summer were to perform data reduction on light curves of pulsating white dwarfs and to gain research experience. Over the course of the summer, I was successful in reducing the data of a pulsating white dwarf taken with WET because I page 7 7/31/00

8 had found the independent frequencies at which the star pulsates. Besides being successful in find the independent frequencies, I also gained experience doing data reduction of light curves taken by WET and also CCD images. In the future, my experience may even allow me to take part of the next WET run. Works Cited Kawaler, Steven D. and Winget, Donald E. White Dwarfs: Fossil Stars. Sky and Telescope. August Kawaler, Steven D. and Dahlstrom, Michael. White Dwarf Stars. American Scientist. In press Nather, Edward R. and Winget, Donald E. Taking the Pulse of White Dwarfs. Sky and Telescope. April page 8 7/31/00

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