A Progress Report on the Carbon Dominated Atmosphere White Dwarfs

TL;DR

This paper reports on new high-quality spectroscopic observations of white dwarfs with atmospheres dominated by carbon, expanding understanding of these rare stellar objects and their atmospheric compositions.

Contribution

It provides new observational data and analysis on carbon-dominated atmosphere white dwarfs, building on recent discoveries and offering insights into their properties.

Findings

Confirmation of carbon dominance in white dwarf atmospheres

Identification of spectral features indicative of atmospheric composition

Enhanced understanding of white dwarf atmospheric diversity

Abstract

Recently, Dufour et al. (2007) reported the unexpected discovery that a few white dwarfs found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey had an atmosphere dominated by carbon with little or no trace of hydrogen and helium. Here we present a progress report on these new objects based on new high signal-to-noise follow-up spectroscopic observations obtained at the 6.5m MMT telescope on Mount Hopkins, Arizona.