2018/05/31 by M. A. Hollands, Mark Hollands, P-E Tremblay +7 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrometry #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Binary number #Brown dwarf #Massive compact halo object #Photometry (optics) #Physics #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #White dwarf #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/sty2057
Accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2018/07/20 · openalex publication_date 2018/08/02 · arxiv updated 2018/08/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Using Gaia DR2 data, we present an up-to-date sample of white dwarfs within 20 pc of the Sun. In total we identified 139 systems in Gaia DR2, nine of which are new detections, with the closest of these located at a distance of 13.05 pc. We estimated atmospheric parameters for all stellar remnants based on the Gaia parallaxes and photometry. The high precision and completeness of the Gaia astrometry allowed us to search for wide binary companions. We re-identified all known binaries where both components have accurate DR2 astrometry, and established the binarity of one of the nine newly identified white dwarfs. No new companions were found to previously known 20 pc white dwarfs. Finally, we estimated the local white dwarf space-density to be (4.49 ± 0.38) × 10−3 pc−3, having given careful consideration to the distance-dependent Gaia completeness, which misses known objects at short distances, but is close to complete for white dwarfs near 20 pc.