Age of the Galactic stellar halo from Gaia WDs Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Kilic M.
  2. Bergeron P.
  3. Dame K.
  4. Hambly N.C.
  5. Rowell N.
  6. Crawford C.L.
  7. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

We use 156044 white dwarf candidates with >=5{sigma} significant parallax measurements from the Gaia mission to measure the velocity dispersion of the Galactic disc; ({sigma}_U_,{sigma}_V_,{sigma}_W_)=(30.8,23.9,20.0)km/s. We identify 142 objects that are inconsistent with disc membership at the >5{sigma} level. This is the largest sample of field halo white dwarfs identified to date. We perform a detailed model atmosphere analysis using optical and near-infrared photometry and parallaxes to constrain the mass and cooling age of each white dwarf. The white dwarf cooling ages of our targets range from 7Myr for J1657+2056 to 10.3Gyr for J1049-7400. The latter provides a firm lower limit of 10.3Gyr for the age of the inner halo based on the well-understood physics of white dwarfs. Including the pre-white dwarf evolutionary lifetimes, and limiting our sample to the recently formed white dwarfs with cooling ages of <500Myr, we estimate an age of 10.9+/-0.4Gyr (internal errors only) for the Galactic inner halo. The coolest white dwarfs in our sample also give similar results. For example, J1049-7400 has a total age of 10.9-11.1Gyr. Our age measurements are consistent with other measurements of the age of the inner halo, including the white dwarf based measurements of the globular clusters M4, NGC 6397, and 47 Tuc.

Keywords
  1. white-dwarf-stars
  2. galaxy-kinematics
  3. photometry
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2019MNRAS.482..965K
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/MNRAS/482/965
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/482/965

Access

Web browser access HTML
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/MNRAS/482/965
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/MNRAS/482/965
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/MNRAS/482/965
IVOA Table Access TAP
http://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tap
Run SQL-like queries with TAP-enabled clients (e.g., TOPCAT).
IVOA Cone Search SCS
For use with a cone search client (e.g., TOPCAT).
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/MNRAS/482/965/table1?
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/MNRAS/482/965/table1?
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/MNRAS/482/965/table1?

History

2022-08-01T14:35:21Z
Resource record created
2022-08-01T14:35:21Z
Created
2024-08-19T20:15:28Z
Updated

Contact

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CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
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cds-question@unistra.fr