IUE Observations of White Dwarfs and Hot Subdwarfs

Abstract

The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) has been used by Greenstein and Oke to obtain low resolution spectra from 1150 to 3200 Å of a selection of white dwarfs and hot subdwarfs.The observations can be converted to absolute fluxes so that, by including energy distributions measured with the multichannel spectrometer on the Hale telescope, fluxes can be derived between 1150 and 11000 Å. The IUE absolute fluxes show erratic level shifts of up to 20 percent and probably also smaller changes in the slope. These shifts are probably associated with the level of the radiation induced background coupled with uncertainties in the calibration of the non-linear detectors. In many cases, these anomalies in the fluxes are obvious, but they do decrease the accuracy with which temperatures and gravities can be determined.