Luminosity Function of Cool Degenerates

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Scientific paper

The main goal of this project is to derive the luminosity function (LF) for cool white dwarfs (CWDs). Observationally, the faint end of the WD's LF is based in only three stars (Liebert et al., 1988) located right where the LF shows a falloff. The shape of this LF has been successfully used to infer the age of the Galactic disk, depending upon the cooling theory used, the estimates range from 6.5 to 11 Gyr (Wood 1992, 1995; Leggett et al. 1998). The observed WD sequence could also be used to test the available cooling models that predict the onset of crystallization for WDs fainter than M_v ~ 13.5. Our aim is to define a complete sample of CWDs in a large enough volume (400 square degrees in the sky) to produce a LF with strong statistical weight at its faint end, that will provide a solid data set to confront with evolutionary models of cooling WDs. The candidates will originate from our own proper motion survey (with red plates) . Here we request time for the necessary spectroscopic follow-up and V,R,I photometry, of all stars in this survey, having proper motions exceeding 0.22''/yr. During the time already allocated to this project, 35 new CWDs have been discovered, among them we have identified the faintest WD known, which is more than one magnitude fainter than the fall off of the LF (see Figure 1), wich has an M/L~ 10^5 (Ruiz et al., 1995).

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