Browsing by Author "Toloza, O."

The infrared dust emission from the white dwarf GD 56 is found to rise and fall by 20 per cent peak-to-peak over 11.2 yr, and is consistent with ongoing dust production and depletion. It is hypothesized that the dust is produced via collisions associated with an evolving dust disc, temporarily increasing the emitting surface of warm debris, and is subsequently destroyed or assimilated within a few years. The variations are consistent with debris that does not change temperature, indicating that dust is produced and depleted within a fixed range of orbital radii. Gas produced in collisions may rapidly re-condense onto grains, or may accrete onto the white dwarf surface on viscous timescales that are considerably longer than Poynting–Robertson drag for micron-sized dust. This potential delay in mass accretion rate change is consistent with multi-epoch spectra of the unchanging Ca ii and Mg ii absorption features in GD 56 over 15 yr, although the sampling is sparse. Overall, these results indicate that collisions are likely to be the source of dust and gas, either inferred or observed, orbiting most or all polluted white dwarfs.

The INT Galactic Plane Survey (IGAPS) is the merger of the optical photometric surveys, IPHAS and UVEX, based on data from the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) obtained between 2003 and 2018. Here, we present the IGAPS point source catalogue. It contains 295.4 million rows providing photometry in the filters, i, r, narrow-band Hα, g, and URGO. The IGAPS footprint fills the Galactic coordinate range,

The white dwarf binary pathways survey is dedicated to studying the origin and evolution of binaries containing a white dwarf and an intermediate-mass secondary star of the spectral type A, F, G, or K (WD + AFGK). Here, we present CPD-65 264, a new post-common envelope binary with an orbital period of 1.37 d that contains a massive white dwarf ($0.86\pm 0.06\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$) and an intermediate-mass ($1.00\pm 0.05\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$) main-sequence secondary star. We characterized the secondary star and measured the orbital period using high-resolution optical spectroscopy. The white dwarf parameters are determined from HST spectroscopy. In addition, TESS observations revealed that up to 19 per cent of the surface of the secondary is covered with starspots. Small period changes found in the light curve indicate that the secondary is the second example of a G-type secondary star in a post-common envelope binary with latitudinal differential rotation. Given the relatively large mass of the white dwarf and the short orbital period, future mass transfer will be dynamically and thermally stable and the system will evolve into a cataclysmic variable. The formation of the system can be understood assuming common envelope evolution without contributions from energy sources besides orbital energy. CPD-65 264 is the seventh post-common envelope binaries with intermediate-mass secondaries that can be understood assuming a small efficiency in the common envelope energy equation, in agreement with findings for post-common envelope binaries with M-dwarf or substellar companions

The white dwarf binary pathways survey is dedicated to studying the origin and evolution of binaries containing a white dwarf and an intermediate-mass secondary star of the spectral type A, F, G, or K (WD+AFGK). Here we present CPD-65 264, a new post common envelope binary with an orbital period of 1.37 days that contains a massive white dwarf (0.86 ± 0.06 M ) and an intermediate-mass (1.00 ± 0.05 M ) main-sequence secondary star. We characterized the secondary star and measured the orbital period using high-resolution optical spectroscopy. The white dwarf parameters are determined from HST spectroscopy. In addition, TESS observations revealed that up to 19 percent of the surface of the secondary is covered with starspots. Small period changes found in the light curve indicate that the secondary is the second example of a G-type secondary star in a post common envelope binary with latitudinal differential rotation. Given the relatively large mass of the white dwarf and the short orbital period, future mass transfer will be dynamically and thermally stable and the system will evolve into a cataclysmic variable. The formation of the system can be understood assuming common envelope evolution without contributions from energy sources besides orbital energy. CPD-65 264 is the seventh post common envelope binaries with intermediate-mass secondaries that can be understood assuming a small efficiency in the common envelope energy equation, in agreement with findings for post common envelope binaries with M-dwarf or sub-stellar companions.