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Article
A Determination of the Local Density of White Dwarf Stars
The Astrophysical journal
  • J. B. Holberg, University of Arizona
  • Terry D. Oswalt, Florida Institute of Technology
  • E. M. sion, Villanova University
Submitting Campus
Daytona Beach
Department
Physical Sciences
Document Type
Article
Publication/Presentation Date
2-7-2001
Abstract/Description

The most recent version of the Catalog of Spectroscopically Identified White Dwarfs lists 2249 white dwarf stars. Among these stars are 109 white dwarfs that have either reliable trigonometric parallaxes or color-based distance moduli that place them at a distance within 20 pc of the Sun. Most of these nearby white dwarfs are isolated stars, but 28 (25% of the sample) are in binary systems, including such well-known systems as Sirius A/B and Procyon A/B. There are also three double degenerate systems in this sample of the local white dwarf population. The sample of local white dwarfs is largely complete out to 13 pc, and the local density of white dwarf stars is found to be 5.0 ± 0.7 × 10-3 pc-3, with a corresponding mass density of 3.4 ± 0.5 × 10-3 M☉ pc-3.

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1086/339842
Publisher
The Institute of Physics
Grant or Award Name
NASA grant NAGW5-9408
Additional Information

Dr. Oswalt was not affiliated with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at the time this paper was published.

Citation Information
J. B. Holberg, Terry D. Oswalt and E. M. sion. "A Determination of the Local Density of White Dwarf Stars" The Astrophysical journal Vol. 571 Iss. 1 (2001) p. 512 - 518
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/terry_d_oswalt/87/