The Astro-Seminar will take place Wednesday 03 November, at 14:00 in Holzblat Hall (7).

  Title: NLTT 11748 - THE FIRST ECLIPSING DETACHED DOUBLE WD BINARY

  Speaker: Dr. Avi Shporer, UC Santa Barbara

Abstract:

NLTT 11748 is the first detached double white dwarf (WD) binary system where eclipses have been discovered. It is also the first such system including a low-mass, helium-core WD. I will present the discovery of the system, and the interesting astrophysical phenomena it shows. One of those is the relatively large flux modulation induced by the relativistic beaming effect, resulting from the inverted WD mass-luminosity relation, which we were able to detect from the ground. Finally, I will briefly discuss our plans to look for additional similar systems.

  Relevant papers:

Steinfadt et al. 2010

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ...716L.146S

Shporer et al. 2010

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010arXiv1010.2203S

Kaplan et al. 2010

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ...717L.108K