11. EFFECTIVE TEMPERATURES OF WHITE DWARFS

White dwarf stars are among the most challenging and interesting objects which can be studied. Because they represent the interiors of highly-evolved stars, the chemical composition can be enormously variable from object to object. Furthermore, because of the very large gravities, the composition of the atmosphere may be very different from that in the interior. The theory of the degenerate interior provides a relation among mass, radius and chemical composition. Since temperatures, effective gravities, and redshifts can, for certain stars, provide further relations between mass and radius, one can hope to make checks on the theory which are not possible with ordinary stars. Two parameters which are required, if the maximum possible information is to be obtained from white dwarfs, are effective temperature and gravity. These parameters are obtained for normal stars by matching absolute spectral energy distributions with fluxes computed from model atmospheres. In the case of white dwarfs, until a few years ago neither spectral energy distributions nor good model atmospheres existed. Effective temperatures had to be inferred from UBV photometry and interpolation between the main-sequence stars and black bodies. Further information was obtained from hydrogen-line profiles and rather simple model atmospheres (Weidemann, 1963).