The MUCHFUSS project - Searching for massive compact companions to hot subdwarf stars

Geier S, Heber U, Tillich A, Hirsch H, Müller S, Kupfer T, Schaffenroth V, Classen L, Maxted PF, Østensen RH, Barlow BN, Marsh TR, Gänsicke BT, Napiwotzki R, O'Toole SJ (2010)

Publication Type: Conference contribution

Publication year: 2010

Journal

Book Volume: 1314

Pages Range: 67-72

Conference Proceedings Title: AIP Conference Proceedings

ISBN: 9780735408692

DOI: 10.1063/1.3536418

Abstract

The project Massive Unseen Companions to Hot Faint Underluminous Stars from SDSS (MUCHFUSS) aims at finding hot subdwarf stars with massive compact companions like supermassive white dwarfs (M>1.0M⊙), neutron stars or stellar mass black holes. The existence of such systems is predicted by binary evolution theory and recent discoveries indicate that they exist in our Galaxy. We classified about 1500 hot subdwarf stars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) by colour selection and visual inspection of their spectra. Stars with high velocities have been reobserved and individual SDSS spectra have been analysed. In total about 170 radial velocity variable subdwarfs have been discovered and about 80 of them have been selected as good candidates for follow-up time resolved spectroscopy to derive their orbital parameters. Up to now we found seven close binary sdBs with short orbital periods ranging from ≃0.21 d to 1.5 d. In our photometric follow-up campaign we discovered two eclipsing binaries with most likely substellar companions. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.

Authors with CRIS profile

Involved external institutions

University of Keele United Kingdom (GB) University of Warwick United Kingdom (GB) Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) / Catholic University of Leuven Belgium (BE) Australian Astronomical Observatory Australia (AU) University of Hertfordshire United Kingdom (GB) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill United States (USA) (US)

How to cite

APA:

Geier, S., Heber, U., Tillich, A., Hirsch, H., Müller, S., Kupfer, T.,... O'Toole, S.J. (2010). The MUCHFUSS project - Searching for massive compact companions to hot subdwarf stars. In AIP Conference Proceedings (pp. 67-72).

MLA:

Geier, Stephan, et al. "The MUCHFUSS project - Searching for massive compact companions to hot subdwarf stars." Proceedings of the International Conference on Binaries: In Celebration of Ron Webbink's 65th Birthday 2010. 67-72.

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