Letter to the Editor

Detection of non-radial g-mode pulsations in the newly discovered PG 1159 star HE 1429-1209

Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Abteilung Astronomie, Universität Tübingen, Sand 1, 72076 Tübingen, Germany e-mail: nagel@astro.uni-tuebingen.de

Received: 23 August 2004
Accepted: 10 September 2004

Abstract

We performed time-series photometry of the PG 1159-type star HE 1429-1209, which was recently discovered in the ESO SPY survey. We show that the star is a low-amplitude (≈0.05 mag) non-radial g-mode pulsator with a period of 919 s. HE 1429-1209 is among the hottest known post-AGB stars ( K) and, together with the known pulsator RX J2117.1+3412, it defines empirically the blue edge of the GW Vir instability strip in the HRD at high luminosities.