Spectroscopic analysis of DA white dwarfs from the McCook & Sion catalog

TL;DR

This paper presents a spectroscopic analysis of over 1000 DA white dwarfs from the McCook & Sion catalog, focusing on their properties, the ZZ Ceti instability strip, and binary systems, expanding understanding of white dwarf characteristics.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive spectroscopic dataset for a large sample of DA white dwarfs, including new insights into their mass distribution and specific subclasses like DAO and binary systems.

Findings

Identification of DA white dwarfs within the ZZ Ceti instability strip

Analysis of mass distribution as a function of temperature

Characterization of DA+dM binary systems

Abstract

For some years now, we have been gathering optical spectra of DA white dwarfs in an effort to study and define the empirical ZZ Ceti instability strip. However, we have recently expanded this survey to include all the DA white dwarfs in the McCook & Sion catalog down to a limiting visual magnitude of V=17.5. We present here a spectroscopic analysis of over 1000 DA white dwarfs from this ongoing survey. We have several specific areas of interest most notably the hot DAO white dwarfs, the ZZ Ceti instability strip, and the DA+dM binary systems. Furthermore, we present a comparison of the ensemble properties of our sample with those of other large surveys of DA white dwarfs, paying particular attention to the distribution of mass as a function of effective temperature.