Pith. sign in

REVIEW 2 cited by

The McDonald Accelerating Stars Survey (MASS): White Dwarf Companions Accelerating the Sun-like Stars 12 Psc and HD 159062

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2012.04847 v1 pith:KFU3KIFC submitted 2020-12-09 astro-ph.SR

The McDonald Accelerating Stars Survey (MASS): White Dwarf Companions Accelerating the Sun-like Stars 12 Psc and HD 159062

classification astro-ph.SR
keywords dwarfwhitemassacceleratingaccelerationastrometrydynamicalkeck
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

We present the discovery of a white dwarf companion to the G1 V star 12 Psc found as part of a Keck adaptive optics imaging survey of long-term accelerating stars from the McDonald Observatory Planet Search Program. Twenty years of precise radial-velocity monitoring of 12 Psc with the Tull Spectrograph at the Harlan J. Smith telescope reveals a moderate radial acceleration ($\approx$10 m s$^{-1}$ yr $^{-1}$), which together with relative astrometry from Keck/NIRC2 and the astrometric acceleration between $Hipparcos$ and $Gaia$ DR2 yields a dynamical mass of $M_B$ = 0.605$^{+0.021}_{-0.022}$ $M_{\odot}$ for 12 Psc B, a semi-major axis of 40$^{+2}_{-4}$ AU, and an eccentricity of 0.84$\pm$0.08. We also report an updated orbit fit of the white dwarf companion to the metal-poor (but barium-rich) G9 V dwarf HD 159062 based on new radial velocity observations from the High-Resolution Spectrograph at the Hobby-Eberly Telescope and astrometry from Keck/NIRC2. A joint fit of the available relative astrometry, radial velocities, and tangential astrometric acceleration yields a dynamical mass of $M_B$ = 0.609$^{+0.010}_{-0.011}$ $M_{\odot}$ for HD 159062 B, a semi-major axis of 60$^{+5}_{-7}$ AU, and preference for circular orbits ($e$$<$0.42 at 95% confidence). 12 Psc B and HD 159062 B join a small list of resolved "Sirius-like" benchmark white dwarfs with precise dynamical mass measurements which serve as valuable tests of white dwarf mass-radius cooling models and probes of AGB wind accretion onto their main-sequence companions.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 2 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. A New Sirius-like System at Only 21 Parsecs: An Elusive White Dwarf Companion to the Nearby K-dwarf HD 38230

    astro-ph.SR 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    HD 38230 B is a gravitationally bound white dwarf at 21 pc with a dynamical mass of 0.71 solar masses on a ~1400-year orbit.

  2. White dwarfs within 13 pc: Insights from ultraviolet spectroscopy

    astro-ph.SR 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    UV spectroscopy of the 44 nearest white dwarfs reveals a 2–6% temperature discrepancy between UV and optical model fits, six UV-only metal detections, and a 30% planetary debris accretion rate.