WD 1054-226 revisited: a stable transiting debris system
WD 1054-226 revisited: a stable transiting debris system
J. Korth, A. J. Mustill, H. Parviainen, E. Villaver, J. W. Kuehne, V. J. S. Béjar, Y. Hayashi, N. Abreu García, T. Kagetani, K. Kawauchi, L. Livingston, M. Mori, G. Morello, N. Watanabe, I. Fukuda, K. Ikuta, I. Bonilla-Mariana, E. Esparza-Borges, G. Fernández-Rodríguez, A. Fukui, S. Geraldía-González, J. González-Rodríguez, K. Isogai, N. Narita, E. Palle, A. Peláez-Torres, M. Sánchez-Benavente
AbstractA growing number of white dwarfs (WDs) exhibit one or more signs of remnant planetary systems, including transits, infrared excesses, and atmospheric metal pollution. WD 1054-226 stands out for its unique, highly structured, and persistent photometric variability. We aim to investigate the long-term stability and nature of the periodic signals observed in WD 1054-226 to better understand the origin and evolution of its transiting material. We analyse all available TESS light curves from Sectors 9, 36, 63, and 90 using Lomb-Scargle (LS), Box-Least-Squares (BLS), and Gaussian process (GP) periodogram analyses. We complement these with multiband, high-cadence ground-based photometry from LCOGT, MuSCAT2, ALFOSC, and ProEM to test for colour dependence and confirm the periodicities. We confirm the persistence of the previously-reported 25.01 h and 23.1 min periodicities over a six-year baseline. The 25.01 h signal shows some temporal evolution, while the 23.1 min dips are highly coherent on long timescales. A transient 11.4 h feature, previously reported, is detected only in early TESS sectors and is absent in recent data. No significant colour dependence is found in the ground-based observations. The stability of both the 25.01 h and 23.1 min signals indicates a long-lived, dynamically sculpted debris structure around WD 1054-226. The lack of colour dependence implies high optical depth, consistent with an opaque, edge-on debris ring rather than an optically thin dust population. This makes WD 1054-226 a key laboratory for testing models of remnant planetary systems around white dwarfs.