A Tidally Disrupted Asteroid around the White Dwarf G29-38

By Michael Jura. 2003

446 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The infrared excess around the white dwarf G29-38 can be explained by emission from an opaque flat ring of dust with an inner radius of 0.14 R☉ and an outer radius of less than 1 R☉. This ring lies within the Roche region of the white dwarf where an asteroid could have been tidally destroyed, producing a system reminiscent of Saturn's rings. Accretion onto the white dwarf from this circumstellar dust can explain the observed calcium abundance in the atmosphere of G29-38. Either as a bombardment by a series of asteroids or because of one large disruption, the total amount of matter accreted onto the white dwarf may have been ~4 × 1024 g, comparable to the total mass of asteroids in the solar system, or, equivalently, about 1% of the mass in the asteroid belt around the main-sequence star ζ Lep.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0d70a146867c329b70001e4a2114010206528859

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Citations in the corpus

Formation of planetary debris discs around white dwarfs – I. Tidal disruption of an extremely eccentric asteroid (2014, background): “Although the tidal breakup of rocky asteroidal material has previously been proposed (Graham et al. 1990; Jura 2003; Bear & Soker 2013), the progenitors of these discs could be comets, moons or planets.”
POLLUTION OF SINGLE WHITE DWARFS BY ACCRETION OF MANY SMALL ASTEROIDS (2008, background): “(1) The near-infrared excess discovered around G29-38 (Zuckerman & Becklin 1987) was shown to be produced by dust (Graham et al. 1990) that likely resulted from an orbitally-perturbed minor planet (Debes & Sigurdsson 2002) that passed within the tidal-radius of the host star (Jura 2003).”
The frequency of planetary debris around young white dwarfs (2014, background): “Accretion of debris from the disruption of planetary bodies is now the canonical explanation (Graham et al. 1990; Jura 2003) for the presence of dusty and gaseous discs discovered around 30 white dwarfs (e.g., Zuckerman & Becklin 1987; Becklin et al. 2005; Gänsicke et al. 2006; Farihi et al.…”
Externally Polluted White Dwarfs with Dust Disks (2007, methodology): “For a flat, opaque disk that is passively illuminated by the host star; the expected flux, Fν(d), is (Jura 2003): Fν(d) = 12 π 1/3 R 2 ∗ cos i D2 ( 2 kB T∗ 3 h ν )8/3 h ν3 c2 ∫ xmax xmin x5/3 ex − 1 dx (2) where i denotes the inclination angle of the disk and i = 0◦ corresponds to a face-on…”
The chemical diversity of exo-terrestrial planetary debris around white dwarfs (2012, background): “…et al. 2012) unambiguously demonstrates that debris from the tidal disruption of main-belt analogue asteroids or minor planets (Graham et al. 1990; Jura 2003), or Kuiper-belt like objects (Bonsor et al. 2011), likely perturbed by unseen planets (Debes & Sigurdsson 2002; Debes et al. 2012), is…”
Simulations of two-planet systems through all phases of stellar evolution: implications for the instability boundary and white dwarf pollution (2013, background): “Planetary material that is accreted on to WDs might be composed of many small asteroids or comets (Jura 2003; Bonsor et al. 2011; Debes et al. 2012), but could also be the result of a single large object.”
Magnetic White Dwarfs (2015, background): “This photospheric pollution requires recent or ongoing accretion and the widely accepted hypothesis for the origin of the material is planetary debris (Jura 2003).”
New white dwarf stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 10 (2014, background): “9% of white dwarfs cooler than Teff = 12 000 K in our sample show spectra contaminated by metals, probably due to accretion of rocky material around the stars (e.g. Graham et al. 1990; Jura 2003; Koester, Gänsicke, & Farihi 2014).”
Circumstellar Debris and Pollution at White Dwarf Stars (2016, methodology): “The flux from the ring is (Jura, 2003) F = 2πcos i d2 ∫ rout rin Bν(T ) r dr (3) where Bν(T ) is the Planck function.”
Can Planets Survive Stellar Evolution? (2007, background): “To explain G29-38, Jura (2003) proposed a disk formed by the tidal destruction of an asteroid.”
INFRARED SIGNATURES OF DISRUPTED MINOR PLANETS AT WHITE DWARFS (2009, methodology): “Evidence is strong that these disks evolve from the tidal disruption of minor planets (Jura 2008, 2003).”
New white dwarf and subdwarf stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 12 (2015, background): “Of the new white dwarfs in our sample, 3% have spectra with metal lines, probably due to accretion of rocky material around the stars (e.g. Graham et al. 1990; Jura 2003; Koester, Gänsicke, & Farihi 2014).”
ANCIENT PLANETARY SYSTEMS ARE ORBITING A LARGE FRACTION OF WHITE DWARF STARS (2010, background): “…massive rocky objects that first are tidally disrupted into a disk that orbits a white dwarf and subsequently are accreted onto the white dwarf (Jura 2003; Gansicke et al 2006; Kilic et al. 2006; von Hippel et al 2007; Farihi et al. 2009; Jura et al. 2009b; Farihi et al. 2010a; Melis et al…”
Evidence for Mass-dependent Circumstellar Disk Evolution in the 5 Myr Old Upper Scorpius OB Association (2006, background): “The inner-disk radius inferred by the weak (or lack-of) excess emission at 16µm is ∼ 4-10 AU for 6000-10,000 K photospheres assuming optically thin, blackbody dust emission (Jura 2003).”
DIRECT OBSERVATION OF THE COOLING OF THE CASSIOPEIA A NEUTRON STAR (2010, background): “Transient heating can originate from external causes, e.g., accretion of circumstellar gas or asteroids (e.g. Jura 2003; Cordes & Shannon 2008), or from internal sources, e.g., by the same mechanism that is responsible for pulsar glitches (van Riper et al. 1991; Seward et al. 2000; Helfand et al.…”
The Dust Cloud around the White Dwarf G29-38 (2005, background): “Possible explanations for the atmospheric metals and the infrared excess include interstellar medium (ISM) accretion (Dupuis et al. 1993; Koester et al. 1997; Zuckerman & Reid 1998), cometary breakup (Alcock et al. 1986), and asteroid disruption (Jura 2003).”
Dynamical effects of stellar mass-loss on a Kuiper-like belt (2011, background): “The best models to explain these systems (Debes & Sigurdsson 2002; Jura 2003; Gänsicke et al. 2006; Kilic et al. 2006; von Hippel et al. 2007; Farihi, Jura & Zuckerman 2009; Farihi et al. 2010b; Melis et al. 2011) suggest that asteroids or comets from the remnants of main-sequence…”