Roman's Diamonds: dust and atmospheric physics of white dwarf stars
| Program ID | 19109 |
|---|---|
| Science Category | Stellar Physics |
| Program Type | Analysis |
| Category | Small |
| Principal Investigator | Carl Melis |
| PI Institution | University of California, San Diego |
| Co-Investigators |
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| Abstract | The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will collect a revolutionary dataset for the understanding of white dwarf planetary systems and atmospheric physics. With the most complete white dwarf census ever compiled supplied by Gaia and Roman coverage of the Galactic Plane and High Latitude fields, it will be possible to construct high fidelity spectral energy distributions for white dwarfs of all temperatures from the optical to the infrared. With a Roman white dwarf survey conducted over the first two years of the mission we expect to develop the most robust disk occurrence rates as a function of white dwarf temperature and near-infrared excess fraction ever produced and deliver impactful advances for atmospheric models of low-temperature white dwarfs where additional physics is clearly necessary. |