Related papers: On the White Dwarf distances to Galactic Globular …
Deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations with WFPC2 of the nearby globular cluster NGC 6752 have allowed us to obtain accurate photometry for the cluster white dwarfs (WD). A sample of local WDs of known trigonometric parallax and…
We present deep VI photometry of stars in the globular cluster M5 (NGC 5904) based on images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The resulting color-magnitude diagram reaches below V ~ 27 mag, revealing the upper 2-3 magnitudes of the…
White dwarfs in globular clusters offer additional possibilities to determine distances and ages of globular clusters, provided their spectral types and masses are known. We therefore started a project to obtain spectra of white dwarfs in…
We discuss the different biases affecting the sample of field subdwarfs selected from the Hipparcos Catalogue, and used in the Main Sequence Fitting technique to derive distances to Galactic Globular Clusters. The adopted average…
We present a new determination of the distance (and age) of the Galactic globular cluster 47 Tucanae (NGC 104) based on the fit of its white dwarf (WD) cooling sequence with the empirical fiducial sequence of local WD with known…
We review empirical and theoretical findings concerning white dwarfs in Galactic globular clusters. Since their detection is a critical issue we describe in detail the various efforts to find white dwarfs in globular clusters. We then…
We investigate in detail the white dwarf cooling sequence of the globular cluster Messier 4. In particular we study the influence of various systematic uncertainties, both observational and theoretical, on the determination of the cluster…
The present status of the distance scale to Galactic globular clusters is reviewed. Six distance determination techniques which are deemed to be most reliable are discussed in depth. These different techniques are used to calibrate the…
We present a new distance determination to the Galactic globular cluster 47 Tucanae by fitting the spectral energy distributions of its white dwarfs to pure hydrogen atmosphere white dwarf models. Our photometric dataset is obtained from a…
Recent years have seen a substantial improvement both in photometry of low luminosity stars in globular clusters and in modelling the stellar atmospheres of late-type dwarfs. We build on these observational and theoretical advances in…
Given the importance of white dwarfs (WDs) in many fields of modern astrophysics, the precise knowledge of the actual degree of accuracy of the associated theoretical predictions is a primary task. In the first paper of a series dedicated…
We investigate in this paper the error on the cluster redshift estimate as a function of: (1) the number of galaxy structures along the line of sight; (2) the morphology of the clusters (regular/substructures); (3) the nature of the…
The hydrogen envelope is the outermost layer of a DA white dwarf; it makes up the entirety of the stellar photosphere, and yet its typical extent is difficult to model theoretically and remains poorly observationally constrained. As a…
Using WFPC2 on the Hubble Space Telescope, we have isolated a sample of 258 white dwarfs (WDs) in the Galactic globular cluster M4. Fields at three radial distances from the cluster center were observed and sizeable WD populations were…
We study the white dwarf (WD) cooling sequence of the Galactic Globular Cluster (GGC) NGC 2808 by using deep near-UV data from the Hubble Space Telescope and theoretical models, to investigate if this cluster hosts an excess of WDs. Excess…
Fundamental parameters and physical processes leading to the formation of white dwarfs (WDs) may be constrained and refined by discovering WDs in open clusters (OCs). Cluster membership can be utilized to establish the precise distances,…
With the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on the Hubble Space Telescope, we have discovered in M4 (NGC 6121, C 1620-264) the first extensive sequence of cooling white dwarfs seen in a globular cluster. Adopting a distance modulus of…
Next-generation wide-field spectroscopic surveys will observe the infall regions around large numbers of galaxy clusters with high sampling rates for the first time. Here we assess the feasibility of extracting the large-scale cosmic web…
Recent observations of the white dwarf (WD) populations in the Galactic globular cluster NGC 6397 suggest that WDs receive a kick of a few km/s shortly before they are born. Using our Monte Carlo cluster evolution code, which includes…
We review the results on distances and absolute ages of galactic globular clusters (GCs) obtained after the release of the Hipparcos catalogue. Several methods for the Population II local distance scale are discussed, exploiting NEW RESULTS…