Related papers: Prospects for cool white dwarf science from Pan-ST…
We report the discovery of five very cool white dwarfs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Four are ultracool, exhibiting strong collision induced absorption (CIA) from molecular hydrogen and are similar in color to the three previously…
The upcoming NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will obtain space-based uninterrupted light curves for a large sample of bright white dwarfs distributed across the entire sky, providing a very rich resource for…
With the development of high contrast imaging techniques and infrared detectors, vast efforts have been devoted during the past decade to detect and characterize lighter, cooler and closer companions to nearby stars, and ultimately image…
Galactic history is written in the white dwarf stars. Their surface properties hint at interiors composed of matter under extreme conditions. In the forty years since their discovery, pulsating white dwarf stars have moved from side-show…
A detailed analysis of 32 of the 38 halo white dwarf candidates identified by Oppenheimer et al. is presented, based on model atmosphere fits to observed energy distributions built from optical BVRI and infrared JHK CCD photometry.…
We present the culmination of our near-infrared survey of the optically spectroscopically identified white dwarf stars from the McCook & Sion catalog, conducted using photometric data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey final All Sky Data…
The Gaia data will help to improve the construction of a luminosity function for the disk and the halo and will provide a more accurate determination of the age of our solar neighborhood. Moreover, reliable stellar dynamical investigations…
Dwarf galaxies dominate the galaxy population in the nearby Universe and occupy the regime where feedback, reionization, and environment exert their strongest influence on galaxy formation. Despite their importance, detailed spectroscopic…
On the basis of theoretical evolutionary expectations, we develop a Galactic model reproducing star counts and synthetic color-magnitude diagrams of field stars, which include the white dwarf (WD) population. In this way we are able to…
With the first observations of debris disks as well as proposed planets around white dwarfs, the question of how rocky planets around such stellar remnants can be characterized and probed for signs of life becomes tangible. White dwarfs are…
Most of low- and intermediate-mass stars that populate the Universe will end their lives as white dwarf stars. These ancient stellar remnants have encrypted inside a precious record of the evolutionary history of the progenitor stars,…
The aim of the Degenerate Objects around Degenerate Objects (DODO) survey is to search for very low mass brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets in wide orbits around white dwarfs via direct imaging. The direct detection of such companions…
We describe the spectral classification of white dwarfs and some of the physical processes important for their understanding. In the major part of this paper we discuss the input physics and computational methods for one of the most widely…
Astrometric weak gravitational lensing is a powerful probe of the distribution of matter on sub-Galactic scales, which harbor important information about the fundamental nature of dark matter. We propose a novel method that utilizes angular…
Although there is abundant and diverse observational evidence in support of white dwarf stars hosting planets or debris disks which form in the catastrophic destruction of various planetary bodies, the key processes that explain these…
We have paired the Second Data Release of the Large Area Survey of the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey with the Fifth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to identify ten cool white dwarf candidates, from their photometry and…
The evolution of white dwarfs is a simple gravothermal process. This means that their luminosity function, i.e. the number of white dwarfs per unit bolometric magnitude and unit volume as a function of bolometric magnitude, is a…
First results are presented for a Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys snapshot study of white dwarfs with likely red dwarf companions. Of 48 targets observed and analyzed so far, 27 are totally or partially resolved into two…
Cool white dwarfs with Teff < 6000 K are the remnants of the oldest stars that existed in our Galaxy. Their atmospheres, when properly characterized, can provide valuable information on white dwarf evolution and ultimately star formation…
Deriving precise stellar ages is a challenging task. Consequently, age-dependent relations - such as the age-metallicity and age-velocity dispersion relations of the Milky Way, or the age-rotation-activity relation of low-mass stars - are…