Catalogs of Hot White Dwarfs in the Milky Way from GALEX's Ultraviolet Sky Surveys. Constraining Stellar Evolution

TL;DR

This paper creates extensive UV-based catalogs of hot white dwarf candidates in the Milky Way using GALEX data, enabling improved understanding of stellar evolution and distribution.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale, publicly available UV catalogs of hot white dwarf candidates, with detailed selection criteria and analysis of their Galactic distribution.

Findings

Hot white dwarf candidates are more numerous at high Galactic latitudes.

The distribution of candidates supports models with lower final stellar masses.

Dust extinction affects the observed density of hot stars near the Galactic plane.

Abstract

We present comprehensive catalogs of hot star candidates in the Milky Way, selected from GALEX far-UV (FUV, 1344-1786 AA) and near-UV (NUV, 1771-2831 AA) imaging. The FUV and NUV photometry allows us to extract the hottest stellar objects, in particular hot white dwarfs (WD), which are elusive at other wavelengths because of their high temperatures and faint optical luminosities. We generated catalogs of UV sources from two GALEX's surveys: AIS (All-Sky Imaging Survey, depth ABmag~19.9/20.8 in FUV/NUV) and MIS (Medium-depth Imaging Survey, depth ~22.6/22.7mag). The two catalogs (from GALEX fifth data release) contain 65.3/12.6 million (AIS/MIS) unique UV sources with error(NUV)<0.5mag, over 21,435/1,579 square degrees. We also constructed subcatalogs of the UV sources with matched optical photometry from SDSS (7th data release): these contain 0.6/0.9million (AIS/MIS) sources with errors <0.3mag in both FUV and NUV, excluding sources with multiple optical counterparts, over an area of 7,325/1,103 square degrees. All catalogs are available online. We then selected 28,319(AIS)/9,028(MIS) matched sources with FUV-NUV<-0.13; this color cut corresponds to stellar Teff hotter than ~18,000 K. An additional color cut of NUV-r>0.1 isolates binaries with largely differing Teff's, and some intruding QSOs. Available spectroscopy for a subsample indicates that hot-star candidates with NUV-r<0.1 have negligible contamination by non-stellar objects. We discuss the distribution of sources in the catalogs, and the effects of error and color cuts on the samples. The density of hot-star candidates increases from high to low Galactic latitudes, but drops on the MW plane due to dust extinction. Our hot-star counts at all latitudes are better matched by Milky Way models computed with an initial-final mass relation that favours lower final masses. (ABRIDGED)