THE WIRED SURVEY. IV. NEW DUST DISKS FROM THE McCOOK & SION WHITE DWARF CATALOG

We have compiled photometric data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer All Sky Survey and other archival sources for the more than 2200 objects in the original McCook & Sion Catalog of Spectroscopically Identified White Dwarfs. We applied color-selection criteria to identify 28 targets w...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astrophysical journal 2013-06, Vol.770 (1), p.1-14
Main Authors: Hoard, D W, Debes, John H, Wachter, Stefanie, Leisawitz, David T, Cohen, Martin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
COLOR MODEL
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
Disks
Dust
DUSTS
ENERGY SPECTRA
HEAT EXCHANGERS
Infrared
INFRARED SURVEYS
Mathematical models
PHOTOMETRY
PHOTOSPHERE
PLANETARY NEBULAE
SENSITIVITY
Silicon oxynitride
SKY
Spectral energy distribution
WAVELENGTHS
WHITE DWARF STARS
WIRES
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We have compiled photometric data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer All Sky Survey and other archival sources for the more than 2200 objects in the original McCook & Sion Catalog of Spectroscopically Identified White Dwarfs. We applied color-selection criteria to identify 28 targets whose infrared spectral energy distributions depart from the expectation for the white dwarf (WD) photosphere alone. Seven of these are previously known WDs with circumstellar dust disks, five are known central stars of planetary nebulae, and six were excluded for being known binaries or having possible contamination of their infrared photometry. We fit WD models to the spectral energy distributions of the remaining ten targets, and find seven new candidates with infrared excess suggesting the presence of a circumstellar dust disk. We compare the model dust disk properties for these new candidates with a comprehensive compilation of previously published parameters for known WDs with dust disks. It is possible that the current census of WDs with dust disks that produce an excess detectable at K-band and shorter wavelengths is close to complete for the entire sample of known WDs to the detection limits of existing near-IR all-sky surveys. The WD dust disk candidates now being found using longer wavelength infrared data are drawn from a previously underrepresented region of parameter space, in which the dust disks are overall cooler, narrower in radial extent, and/or contain fewer emitting grains.
ISSN:0004-637X
1538-4357
DOI:10.1088/0004-637X/770/1/21