https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20134706005
The WFCAM transit survey and cool white dwarfs
1 Centre for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield AL 10 9AB, UK
2 Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
3 Centro de Estudios de Fisica del Cosmos de Aragon (ceFca), 44001 Teruel, Spain
a e-mail: s.catalan@herts.ac.uk
We present results from our search for cool white dwarfs in the WTS (WFCAM Transit Survey). Repeat observations starting in 2007 allowed to produce deep stacked images in J and measure proper motions. We combine this with deep optical imaging to select cool white dwarf candidates (Teff < 5000 K). About 27 cool white dwarf candidates with proper motions above 0.10 arcsec/yr were identified in one of the fields representing 1/8th of the survey area. Follow-up spectroscopy with the 10.2 m GTC telescope at La Palma confirmed the white dwarf status for all observed candidates. On-going work is being carried out to increase the sample of cool white dwarfs that will allow a more comprehensive study of the thick disk/halo white dwarf population.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2013
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
