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Probing the Extraordinary Ends of Ordinary Stars: White Dwarf Seismology with the Whole Earth Telescope

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

Steven D. Kawaler
Steven D. Kawaler*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State UniversityAmes, IA 50011USA

Abstract

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During the final evolution of most stars, they shed their outer skin and expose their core of the hot ashes of nuclear burning. As these hot and very dense cores cool into white dwarf stars, they go through episodes of multiperiodic, nonradial g-mode pulsation. The tools of stellar seismology allow us to use the pulsation spectra as powerful probes into the deep interiors of these stars. Progress in white dwarf seismology has required significant international cooperation, since another consequence of the complex pulsations of these stars is decoding the true pulsation frequencies requires a coordinated global effort involving high-speed photometric observations. Through one such effort, the Whole Earth Telescope project, we have located subsurface composition changes, detected differential rotation and magnetic fields, and measured fundamental quantities such as stellar mass, luminosity, and distance to extraordinary accuracy.

Type
Part 1. The Scientific Programme
Information
International Astronomical Union Colloquium , Volume 155: Astrophysical Applications of Stellar Pulsation , 1995 , pp. 81 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 1995

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