The Chemical Composition of an Extrasolar Minor Planet

By B. Zuckerman, D. Koester, C. Melis, Brad M. S. Hansen, Michael Jura. 2007

230 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report the relative abundances of 17 elements in the atmosphere of the white dwarf star GD 362, material that, very probably, was contained previously in a large asteroid or asteroids with composition similar to the Earth-Moon system. The asteroid may have once been part of a larger parent body not unlike one of the terrestrial planets of our solar system.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4f024b33c1bf7481d801a748ab1e9340c6f6682d

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. J. Farihi
2. B. Gänsicke
3. D. Koester
4. Michael Jura
5. Pierre Bergeron
6. Amy Bonsor
7. P.-E. Tremblay
8. A. Mustill

Citations in the corpus

• ANCIENT PLANETARY SYSTEMS ARE ORBITING A LARGE FRACTION OF WHITE DWARF STARS (2010, methodology): “Detailed analysis of the relative abundances of elements in the polluting material (Zuckerman et al 2007; Jura et al 2009b; Klein et al 2010) provides a unique tool for measuring the bulk composition of rocky extrasolar objects.”
• Simulations of two-planet systems through all phases of stellar evolution: implications for the instability boundary and white dwarf pollution (2013, background): “Detailed compositional analysis of some objects concludes that the accreted material resembles more closely the bulk Earth in composition than chondritic material (e.g. Zuckerman et al. 2007; Klein et al. 2010); it is feasible that a disrupted planet would produce high levels of pollution in a WD.”
• THE LINK BETWEEN PLANETARY SYSTEMS, DUSTY WHITE DWARFS, AND METAL-POLLUTED WHITE DWARFS (2012, background): “…drizzling onto the surfaces of these white dwarfs is primarily similar to the inner terrestrial planets in our solar system, and 2) that planetesimals which are tidally disrupted best fit the observed location and composition of the dust disks (Zuckerman et al. 2007; Klein et al. 2010; Jura 2003).”
• The frequency of planetary debris around young white dwarfs (2014, background): “The direct detection of planetary material in the photosphere of a white dwarf offers the opportunity to study the chemical composition of exoplanetary systems with a scope and accuracy that will not be reached by other methods in the foreseeable future (Zuckerman et al. 2007).”
• INFRARED SIGNATURES OF DISRUPTED MINOR PLANETS AT WHITE DWARFS (2009, background): “Furthermore, there is now a growing number of DB white dwarfs with evidence for exter- nal pollution via carbon deficiency, relative to metals such as iron (Desharnais et al. 2008; Zuckerman et al. 2007; Jura 2006; Wolff et al. 2002).”
• A SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY AND ANALYSIS OF BRIGHT, HYDROGEN-RICH WHITE DWARFS (2011, background): “We also include in Table 4 the parameters for GD 362 from Zuckerman et al. (2007) as we have not computed appropriate helium models, which include the necessary metals, for a proper re-analysis of this particular object.”
• Circumstellar Debris and Pollution at White Dwarf Stars (2016, background): “…confirmed to have infrared excess by Spitzer based on a modest, photometric K-band excess in 2MASS data (Jura et al., 2007a), and GD 362 was shown to be helium-rich (Zuckerman et al., 2007) even though its optical spectrum has a DAZ morphology at most spectral resolutions (Gianninas et al., 2004).”
• AN IMPROVED SPECTROSCOPIC ANALYSIS OF DA WHITE DWARFS FROM THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY DATA RELEASE 4 (2011, background): “…such as GD 362 and HS 0146+1847, that were interpreted as massive DA stars, but the detection of the weak He i λ5877 line in high-resolution spectroscopic data suggested instead that these stars had normal masses with helium dominated atmospheres (Koester et al. 2005; Zuckerman et al. 2007).”
• The chemical diversity of exo-terrestrial planetary debris around white dwarfs (2012, background): “However, Zuckerman et al. (2007) demonstrated in a pioneering paper that the photospheric abundances of polluted white dwarfs can be used to infer the bulk abundances of the planetary debris mate- rial detected around the white dwarf GD362, and showed that the composition of this material is…”
• KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD: A DETAILED MODEL ATMOSPHERE ANALYSIS OF NEARBY WHITE DWARFS (2012, background): “…H and K lines, the most notable in this sample being GD 362 (1729+371; Figure 1) whose spectrum also shows spectral lines from Ca i, Mg i, and Fe i (Gianninas et al. 2004); high-resolution spectroscopy actually reveals the presence of 17 different elements, including helium (Zuckerman et al. 2007).”
• Formation of planetary debris discs around white dwarfs – I. Tidal disruption of an extremely eccentric asteroid (2014, background): “…due to the low frequency of planetary collisions with WDs (Veras et al. 2013; Mustill, Veras & Villaver 2014) and the compositional inconsistencies (Zuckerman et al. 2007) and dynamical difficulties (Stone, Metzger & Loeb 2014; Veras, Shannon & Gänsicke 2014a) of comet accretion; investigation…”
• POLLUTION OF SINGLE WHITE DWARFS BY ACCRETION OF MANY SMALL ASTEROIDS (2008, background): “(4) The atmospheric composition of GD 362 is refractory-rich and volatile-poor (Zuckerman et al. 2007), reminiscent of material in the inner solar system and unlike the interstellar medium.”