From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Fri Sep 30 2005 - 16:45:40 UTC
Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0412668
From: John H. Debes [view email]
Date (v1): Thu, 30 Dec 2004 01:58:01 GMT (308kb)
Date (revised v2): Wed, 28 Sep 2005 19:51:16 GMT (118kb)
Cool Customers in the Stellar Graveyard I: Limits to Extrasolar Planets
Around the White Dwarf G29-38
Authors: J.H. Debes, S. Sigurdsson, B. Woodgate
Categories: astro-ph
Comments: 20 pages, 4 figures, Accepted to ApJ
We present high contrast images of the hydrogen white dwarf G 29-38 taken in
the near infrared with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini North
Telescope as part of a high contrast imaging search for substellar objects
in orbit around nearby white dwarfs.
We review the current limits on planetary companions for G29-38, the only
nearby white dwarf with an infrared excess due to a dust disk. We add our
recent observations to these limits to produce extremely tight constraints
on the types of possible companions that could be present. No objects $>$ 6
M$_{Jup}$ are detected in our data at projected separations $>$ 12 AU, and
no objects $>$ 16 M$_{Jup}$ are detected for separations from 3 to 12 AU,
assuming a total system age of 1 Gyr. Limits for companions at separations
$<$ 3 AU come from a combination of 2MASS photometry and previous studies of
G29-38's pulsations. Our imaging with Gemini cannot confirm a tentative
claim for the presence of a low mass brown dwarf. These observations
demonstrate that a careful combination of several techniques can probe
nearby white dwarfs for large planets and low mass brown dwarfs.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0412668
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