White Dwarfs: Advances in Observation and Theory

The most recent meeting of the world's white dwarf specialists was held in Leicester, U.K. during July 1992, reporting on the wealth of new astronomical data that has been made available from a new generation of space-based observatories and recent theoretical advances which are essential for interpretation of the results. Astronomers now have access to previously unavailable spectral ranges and dramatically improved sensitivity in those wavebands already explored. Results from the ROSAT all-sky survey, Hubble Space Telescope, Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope and the Colorado Rocket-borne Spectrometer shed new light on the composition of white dwarfs and their evolution. Considerable progress has been made in understanding the internal structure of white dwarfs with asteroseismological techniques which are outlined in several papers. New observational results, which utilise this theoretical work are also presented. This book will be ideal for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in isolated white dwarfs or binary systems containing a white dwarf component.