A search for new hot subdwarf stars by means of Virtual Observatory tools

Abstract

Hot subdwarf stars are faint, blue objects, and are the main contributors to the far-UV excess observed in elliptical galaxies. They offer an excellent laboratory to study close and wide binary systems, and to scrutinize their interiors through asteroseismology, as some of them undergo stellar oscillations. However, their origins are still uncertain, and increasing the number of detections is crucial to undertake statistical studies. In this work, we aim at defining a strategy to find new, uncatalogued hot subdwarfs. Making use of Virtual Observatory tools we thoroughly search stellar catalogues to retrieve multi-colour photometry and astrometric information of a known sample of blue objects, including hot subdwarfs, white dwarfs, cataclysmic variables and main sequence OB stars. We define a procedure to discriminate among these spectral classes, particularly designed to obtain a hot subdwarf sample with a low contamination factor. In order to check the validity of the method, this procedure is then applied to two test sky regions: the Kepler FoV and to a test region of around (RA:225, DEC:5) deg. As a result, we obtained 38 hot subdwarf candidates, 23 of which had already a spectral classification. We have acquired spectroscopy for three other targets, and four additional ones have an available SDSS spectrum, which we used to determine their spectral type. A temperature estimate is provided for the candidates based on their spectral energy distribution, considering two-atmospheres fit for objects with clear infrared excess. Eventually, out of 30 candidates with spectral classification, 26 objects were confirmed to be hot subdwarfs, yielding a contamination factor of only 13%. The high rate of success demonstrates the validity of the proposed strategy to find new uncatalogued hot subdwarfs. An application of this method to the entire sky will be presented in a forthcoming work.

13 pages, 7 figures

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• The population of hot subdwarf stars studied with Gaia II. The Gaia DR2 catalogue of hot subluminous stars
• Population of hot subdwarf stars studied with Gaia III. Catalogue of known hot subdwarf stars: Data Release 2
• The population of hot subdwarf stars studied with Gaia I. The catalogue of known hot subdwarf stars
• A search for new hot subdwarf stars by means of Virtual Observatory tools II
• Identification of red high proper-motion objects in Tycho-2 and 2MASS catalogues using Virtual Observatory tools
• Identification of new hot subdwarf binary systems by means of Virtual Observatory tools
• Advanced Classification of Hot Subdwarf Binaries Using Artificial Intelligence Techniques and Gaia DR3 data
• Detection of hot subdwarf binaries and sdB stars using machine learning methods and a large sample of Gaia XP spectra