Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0412668
From: John H. Debes [view email]
Date (v1): Thu, 30 Dec 2004 01:58:01 GMT (308kb)
Date (revised v2): Wed, 28 Sep 2005 19:51:16 GMT (118kb)

Cool Customers in the Stellar Graveyard I: Limits to Extrasolar Planets Around the White Dwarf G29-38

Authors: J.H. Debes, S. Sigurdsson, B. Woodgate

Categories: astro-ph

Comments: 20 pages, 4 figures, Accepted to ApJ

We present high contrast images of the hydrogen white dwarf G 29-38 taken in the near infrared with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini North Telescope as part of a high contrast imaging search for substellar objects in orbit around nearby white dwarfs.
We review the current limits on planetary companions for G29-38, the only nearby white dwarf with an infrared excess due to a dust disk. We add our recent observations to these limits to produce extremely tight constraints on the types of possible companions that could be present. No objects $>$ 6 M$_{Jup}$ are detected in our data at projected separations $>$ 12 AU, and no objects $>$ 16 M$_{Jup}$ are detected for separations from 3 to 12 AU, assuming a total system age of 1 Gyr. Limits for companions at separations $<$ 3 AU come from a combination of 2MASS photometry and previous studies of G29-38's pulsations. Our imaging with Gemini cannot confirm a tentative claim for the presence of a low mass brown dwarf. These observations demonstrate that a careful combination of several techniques can probe nearby white dwarfs for large planets and low mass brown dwarfs.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0412668