Within the Milky Way Galaxy there are three different stellar populations that stars can reside in: thick disk, thin disk, and halo. For this research, white dwarfs in the local neighborhood were chos..
Within the Milky Way Galaxy there are three different stellar populations that stars can reside in: thick disk, thin disk, and halo. For this research, white dwarfs in the local neighborhood were chosen from the second Gaia data release. Using the white dwarf’s proper motion, parallax, and radial velocity, I calculated their three-dimensional velocities (U, V, W). Working with the star’s three-dimensional velocities, I have created plots of velocity density distribution, expected gaussian distributions for each population, and determined which white dwarfs are most likely in the thick disk based on their U, V, and W velocities. From these analyses, I was able to create a list of 698 white dwarfs that are most likely thick disk stars. Since white dwarf stars are considered the final evolutionary state, they can be good approximators for the age of the thick disk. These white dwarfs will be used in hierarchical analysis to estimate the age of the thick disk of the Milky Way Galaxy.
