TY  - JOUR
A1  - Fusillo, Nicola Pietro Gentile
A1  - Tremblay, Pier-Emmanuel
A1  - Gänsicke, Boris T.
A1  - Manser, Christopher J.
A1  - Cunningham, Tim
A1  - Cukanovaite, Elena
A1  - Hollands, Mark
A1  - Marsh, Thomas
A1  - Raddi, Roberto
A1  - Jordan, Stefan
A1  - Toonen, Silvia
A1  - Geier, Stephan Alfred
A1  - Barstow, Martin
A1  - Cummings, Jeffrey D.
T1  - A Gaia Data Release 2 catalogue of white dwarfs and a comparison with SDSS
T2  - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
N2  - We present a catalogue of white dwarf candidates selected from the second data release of Gaia (DR2). We used a sample of spectroscopically confirmed white dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to map the entire space spanned by these objects in the Gaia Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. We then defined a set of cuts in absolute magnitude, colour, and a number of Gaia quality flags to remove the majority of contaminating objects. Finally, we adopt a method analogous to the one presented in our earlier SDSS photometric catalogues to calculate a probability of being a white dwarf (PWD) for all Gaia sources that passed the initial selection. The final catalogue is composed of 486641 stars with calculated PWD from which it is possible to select a sample of ≃260000 high-confidence white dwarf candidates in the magnitude range 8 < G < 21. By comparing this catalogue with a sample of SDSS white dwarf candidates, we estimate an upper limit in completeness of 85 per cent for white dwarfs with G ≤ 20 mag and Teff >7000 K, at high Galactic latitudes (|b| > 20°). However, the completeness drops at low Galactic latitudes, and the magnitude limit of the catalogue varies significantly across the sky as a function of Gaia’s scanning law. We also provide the list of objects within our sample with available SDSS spectroscopy. We use this spectroscopic sample to characterize the observed structure of the white dwarf distribution in the H–R diagram.
KW  - catalogues
KW  - surveys
KW  - white dwarfs
Y1  - 2018
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/50278
SN  - 0035-8711
SN  - 1365-2966
VL  - 482
IS  - 4
SP  - 4570
EP  - 4591
PB  - Oxford Univ. Press
CY  - Oxford
ER  -