Candidate bulge WDs in the SWEEPS field

DOI

We present Hubble Space Telescope data of the low-reddening Sagittarius window in the Galactic bulge. The Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search field (~3'x3'), together with three more Advanced Camera for Surveys and eight Wide-Field Camera 3 fields, were observed in the F606W and F814W filters, approximately every two weeks for 2 yr, with the principal aim of detecting a hidden population of isolated black holes and neutron stars through astrometric microlensing. Proper motions were measured with an accuracy of ~0.1 mas/yr (~4 km/s) at F606W ~25.5 mag, and better than ~0.5 mas/yr (~20 km/s) at F606W ~28 mag, in both axes. Proper-motion measurements allowed us to separate disk and bulge stars and obtain a clean bulge color-magnitude diagram. We then identified for the first time a white dwarf (WD) cooling sequence in the Galactic bulge, together with a dozen candidate extreme horizontal branch stars. The comparison between theory and observations shows that a substantial fraction of the WDs (~30%) are systematically redder than the cooling tracks for CO-core H-rich and He-rich envelope WDs. This evidence would suggest the presence of a significant number of low-mass WDs and WD-main-sequence binaries in the bulge. This hypothesis is further supported by the finding of two dwarf novae in outburst, two short-period (P <~ 1 day) ellipsoidal variables, and a few candidate cataclysmic variables in the same field.

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/790/164/table1 (List of the Candidate Bulge WDs in the SWEEPS Field)

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.17900164
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/790/164
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/790/164
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/790/164
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/790/164
Provenance
Creator Calamida A.; Sahu K.C.; Anderson J.; Casertano S.; Cassisi S.; Salaris M.,Brown T.; Sokol J.; Bond H.E.; Ferraro I.; Ferguson H.; Livio M.,Valenti J.; Buonanno R.; Clarkson W.; Pietrinferni A.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2017
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Galactic and extragalactic Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy