[120.03] White Dwarf Proper Motions and the White Dwarf Luminosity Function

AAS 205th Meeting, 9-13 January 2005
Session 120 Studies of Variable and Moving Objects with the SDSS
Special Session, Wednesday, January 12, 2005, 10:00-11:30am, Royal Palm 1-3

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[120.03] White Dwarf Proper Motions and the White Dwarf Luminosity Function

J.A. Munn, H.C. Harris (U.S.Naval Observatory, Flagstaff Station), M. Kilic, T. von Hippel (University of Texas), J. Liebert, K.A. Williams (Steward Observatory, University of Arizona), S.J. Kleinman, A. Nitta (Apache Point Observatory), T.S. Metcalfe (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

The white dwarf luminosity function is determined from a sample of 6000 white dwarfs in the magnitude range 15 < g < 19.5, selected using reduced proper motions over the 5300 square degrees of sky in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 3. Proper motions are derived by recalibrating USNO-B versus SDSS. This sample is 15 times larger than previous samples used to determine the white dwarf luminosity function. The sample includes roughly 100 candidate halo or thick disk white dwarfs.

Funding for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society.

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