Whole earth telescope observations of the pulsating hot white dwarf PG 1707+427

Abstract

We report on the analysis of multisite time-series photometry of the pulsating pre-white dwarf (GW Vir star) PG 1707+427, obtained by the Whole Earth Telescope collaboration. This is the last of the known GW Vir stars without surrounding nebulae to be resolved by multisite data. Successful resolution of the pulsation spectrum resulted from the combination of high signal-to-noise observations with a large telescope and wide coverage in longitude with smaller telescopes. We find a series of 8 pulsation frequencies (along with two nonlinear combination frequencies), and identify 7 of them as part of a sequence of l = 1 modes, with a common period spacing of 23.0 s. This spacing implies that the mass of PG 1707+427 is 0.57 Mѳ. Preliminary model fits suggest that the mass determined via asteroseismology is consistent with the mass determined from spectroscopy combined with evolutionary tracks.