Submitting Campus
Daytona Beach
Department
Physical Sciences
Document Type
Article
Publication/Presentation Date
1-2008
Abstract/Description
We present the first phase in our ongoing work to use Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data to create separate white dwarf (WD) luminosity functions (LFs) for two or more different mass ranges. In this paper, we determine the completeness of the SDSS spectroscopic WD sample by comparing a proper-motion selected sample of WDs from SDSS imaging data with a large catalog of spectroscopically determined WDs. We derive a selection probability as a function of a single color (g − i) and apparent magnitude (g) that covers the range −1.0 < g − i < 0.2 and 15 < g < 19.5. We address the observed upturn in log g for WDs with Teff 12,000 K and offer arguments that the problem is limited to the line profiles and is not present in the continuum. We offer an empirical method of removing the upturn, recovering a reasonable mass function for WDs with Teff < 12,000 K. Finally we present a WD LF with nearly an order of magnitude (3358) more spectroscopically confirmed WDs than any previous work.
Publication Title
The Astronomical Journal
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-6256/135/1/1
Publisher
Institute of Physics Publishing, Inc.
Grant or Award Name
National Science Foundation grant AST 03-07315 and AST 06-07480, NASA Grant No. NAG5-13070
Scholarly Commons Citation
DeGennaro, S., von Hippel, T., Winget, D. E., Kepler, S. O., Nitta, A., Koester, D., & Althaus, L. (2008). White Dwarf Luminosity and Mass Functions from Sloan Digital Sky Survey Spectra. The Astronomical Journal, 135(1). https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-6256/135/1/1
