| Issue |
A&A
Volume 546, October 2012
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | L3 | |
| Number of page(s) | 5 | |
| Section | Letters | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201220191 | |
| Published online | 01 October 2012 | |
The brightest pure-H ultracool white dwarf ⋆,⋆⋆
1 Centre for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB, UK
e-mail: s.catalan@herts.ac.uk
2 Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Landessternwarte, Königstuhl 12, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
3 Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Camino del Observatorio 1515, Santiago, Chile
Received: 8 August 2012
Accepted: 2 September 2012
We report the identification of LSR J0745+2627 in the United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) Large Area Survey (LAS) as a cool white dwarf with kinematics and age compatible with the thick-disk/halo population. LSR J0745+2627 has a high proper motion (890 mas/yr) and a high reduced proper motion value in the J band (HJ = 21.87). We show how the infrared-reduced proper motion diagram is useful for selecting a sample of cool white dwarfs with low contamination. LSR J0745+2627 is also detected in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). We have spectroscopically confirmed this object as a cool white dwarf using X-Shooter on the Very Large Telescope. A detailed analysis of its spectral energy distribution reveals that its atmosphere is compatible with a pure-H composition model with an effective temperature of 3880 ± 90 K. This object is the brightest pure-H ultracool white dwarf (Teff < 4000 K) ever identified. We have constrained the distance (24–45 pc), space velocities and age considering different surface gravities. The results obtained suggest that LSR J0745+2627 belongs to the thick-disk/halo population and is also one of the closest ultracool white dwarfs.
Key words: white dwarfs / stars: Population II / stars: abundances / stars: individual: ULAS J074509.02+262705.0 / stars: individual: SDSS J074509.02+262705.0 / stars: fundamental parameters
Based on observations made with ESO telescopes at the Paranal Observatory under programme ID 088.C-0048(B).
FITS version of the reduced spectrum is only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/546/L3
© ESO, 2012
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