Bibcode
Verbeek, K.; Groot, Paul J.; Nelemans, Gijs; Scaringi, Simone; Napiwotzki, Ralf; Drew, Janet E.; Steeghs, Danny; Casares, J.; Corral-Santana, J. M.; Gänsicke, Boris T.; González-Solares, Eduardo; Greimel, Robert; Heber, Ulrich; Irwin, Mike J.; Knigge, Christian; Wright, Nicholas J.; Zijlstra, Albert A.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 434, Issue 4, p.2727-2741
Advertised on:
10
2013
Citations
12
Refereed citations
11
Description
We present a determination of the average space density and birth rate
of hydrogen-line (DA) white dwarfs within a radius of 1 kpc around the
Sun, based on an observational sample of 360 candidate white dwarfs with
g < 19.5 and (g - r) < 0.4, selected from the UV-Excess (UVEX)
survey of the northern Galactic plane, in combination with a theoretical
white dwarf population that has been constructed to simulate the
observations, including the effects of reddening and observational
selection effects. The main uncertainty in the derivation of the white
dwarf space density and current birth rate lies in the absolute
photometric calibration and the photometric scatter of the observational
data, which influences the classification method on colours, the
completeness and the pollution. Corrections for these effects are
applied. We derive an average space density of DA white dwarfs with
Teff > 10 000 K (MV < 12.2) of (3.8 ±
1.1) × 10-4 pc-3, and an average DA white
dwarf birth rate over the last 7×107 yr of (5.4
± 1.5) × 10-13 pc-3 yr-1.
Additionally, we show that many estimates of the white dwarf space
density from different studies are consistent with each other, and with
our determination here.
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