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Paper: Time Series Spectroscopic and Photometric Observations of the Massive DAV BPM 37093
Volume: 493, 19th European Workshop on White Dwarfs
Page: 241
Authors: Nitta, A.; Kepler, S. O.; Chené, A.-N.; Koester, D.; Provencal, J. L.; Kleinman, S. J.; Sullivan, D. J.; Chote, P.; Sefako, R.; Kanaan, A.; Romero, A.; Corti, M.; Kilic, M.; Montgomery, M. H.; Winget, D. E.
Abstract: BPM 37093 was the first of only a handful of massive (1.05+/-0.05 M; Bergeron 2004;Koester & Allard 2000) white dwarf pulsators discovered (Kanaan et al. 1992). These stars are particularly interesting because the crystallized mass-fraction as a function of mass and temperature is poorly constrained by observation, yet this process adds 1–2 Gyr uncertainty in ages of the oldest white dwarf stars observed and hence, in the ages of associations that contain them (Abrikosov 1960; Kirzhnits 1960; Salpeter 1961). Last year, we discovered that ESO uses BPM 37093 as a standard star and extracted corresponding spectra from the public archive. The data suggested a large variation in the observed hydrogen line profiles that could potentially be due to pulsations, but the measurement did not reach a detection-quality threshold. To further explore this possibility, though, we obtained 4hrs of continuous time series spectroscopy of BPM 37093 with Gemini in the Northern Spring of 2014. We present our preliminary results from these data along with those from the accompanying time series photometric observations we gathered from Mt. John (New Zealand), South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), Panchromatic Robotic optical Monitoring and Polarimetry Telescopes (PROMPT) in Chile, and Complejo Astronomico El Leoncito (Argentina) to support the Gemini observations.
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