Magnetic white dwarfs in the Early Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
² Universitäts-Sternwarte, Geismarlandstr. 11, 37083 Göttingen, Germany
³ Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Universität Tübingen, Sand 1, 72076 Tübingen, Germany

Corresponding author: B. Gänsicke, btg@astro.soton.ac.uk

Received: 26 July 2002
Accepted: 23 August 2002

Abstract

We have identified 7 new magnetic DA white dwarfs in the Early Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our selection strategy has also recovered all the previously known magnetic white dwarfs contained in the SDSS EDR, KUV 03292+0035 and HE 0330–0002. Analysing the SDSS fibre spectroscopy of the magnetic DA white dwarfs with our state-of-the-art model spectra, we find dipole field strengths  MG and effective temperatures  K. As a conservative estimate, we expect that the complete SDSS will increase the number of known magnetic white dwarfs by a factor 3.