No Arabic abstract
We present our results on the continuation of our survey searching for new ZZ Ceti stars, inspired by the recently launched TESS space mission. The seven targets were bright DA-type white dwarfs located close to the empirical ZZ Ceti instability strip. We successfully identified one new pulsator candidate, namely PM J22299+3024, derived detection limits for possible pulsations of four objects for the first time, and determined new detection limits for two targets.
Using the SOAR 4.1 m telescope, we report on the discovery of low amplitude pulsations for three stars previously reported as Not-Observed-to-Vary (NOV) by Mukadam et al. (2004) and Mullally et al. (2005), which are inside the ZZ Ceti instability strip. With the two pulsators discovered by Castanheira et al. (2007), we have now found variability in a total of five stars previously reported as NOVs. We also report the variability of eight new pulsating stars, not previously observed, bringing the total number of known ZZ Ceti stars to 148. In addition, we lowered the detection limit for ten NOVs located near the edges of the ZZ Ceti instability strip. Our results are consistent with a pure mass dependent ZZ Ceti instability strip.
We report on the discovery of six new ZZ Ceti stars. They were selected as candidates based on preparatory photometric observations of objects from the Hamburg Quasar Survey (HQS), and based on the spectra of the Supernova Ia Progenitor Survey (SPY). Time-series photometry of 19 candidate stars was carried out at the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) at Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, Spain. The new variables are relatively bright, 15.4<B<16.6. Among them is WD1150-153, which is the third ZZ Ceti star that shows photospheric CaII in its spectrum.
We report the discovery of eleven new ZZ Cetis using telescopes at OPD (Observatorio do Pico dos Dias/LNA) in Brazil, the 4.1 m SOAR (Southern Astrophysical Research) telescope at Cerro Pachon, Chile, and the 2.1 m Otto Struve telescope at McDonald observatory. The candidates were selected from the SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) and SPY (ESO SN Ia progenitor survey), based on their Teff obtained from optical spectra fitting. This selection criterion yields the highest success rate of detecting new ZZ Cetis, above 90% in the Teff range from 12000 to 11000 K. We also report on a DA not observed to vary, with a Teff placing the star close to the blue edge of the instability strip. Among our new pulsators, one is a little bit cooler than this star for which pulsations were not detected. Our observations are an important constraint on the location of the blue edge of the ZZ Ceti instability strip.
Context. We continued our ground-based observing project with the season-long observations of ZZ Ceti stars at Konkoly Observatory. Our present targets are the newly discovered PM J22299+3024, and the already known LP 119-10 variables. LP 119-10 was also observed by the TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) space telescope in 120-second cadence mode. Methods. We performed standard Fourier analysis of the daily, weekly, and the whole data sets, together with test data of different combinations of weekly observations. We then performed asteroseismic fits utilising the observed and the calculated pulsation periods. For the calculations of model grids necessary for the fits, we applied the 2018 version of the White Dwarf Evolution Code. Results. We derived six possible pulsation modes for PM J22299+3024, and five plus two TESS pulsation frequencies for LP 119-10. Note that further pulsation frequencies may be present in the data sets, but we found their detection ambiguous, so we omitted them from the final frequency list. Our asteroseismic fits of PM J22299+3024 give 11 400 K and 0.46 Msun for the effective temperature and the stellar mass. The temperature is ~800 K higher, while the mass of the model star is exactly the same as it was earlier derived by spectroscopy. Our model fits of LP~119-10 put the effective temperature in the range of 11 800 - 11 900 K, which is again higher than the spectroscopic 11 290 K value, while our best model solutions give M* = 0.70 Msun mass for this target, near to the spectroscopic value of 0.65 Msun, likewise in the case of PM J22299+3024. The seismic distances of our best-fitting model stars agree with the Gaia astrometric distances of PM J22299+3024 and LP 119-10 within the errors, validating our model results.
We combine all the reliably-measured eigenperiods for hot, short-period ZZ Ceti stars onto one diagram and show that it has the features expected from evolutionary and pulsation theory. To make a more detailed comparison with theory we concentrate on a subset of 16 stars for which rotational splitting or other evidence gives clues to the spherical harmonic index (l) of the modes. The suspected l=1 periods in this subset of stars form a pattern of consecutive radial overtones that allow us to conduct ensemble seismology using published theoretical model grids. We find that the best-matching models have hydrogen layer masses most consistent with the canonically thick limit calculated from nuclear burning. We also find that the evolutionary models with masses and temperatures from spectroscopic fits cannot correctly reproduce the periods of the k=1 to 4 mode groups in these stars, and speculate that the mass of the helium layer in the models is too large.