Faint Blue Objects in the Hubble Deep Field-South Revealed: White Dwarfs, Subdwarfs, and Quasars

Abstract

We explore the nature of the faint blue objects in the Hubble Deep Field-South. We have derived proper motions for the point sources in the Hubble Deep Field-South using a 3 yr baseline. Combining our proper-motion measurements with spectral energy distribution fitting enabled us to identify four quasars and 42 stars, including three white dwarf candidates. Two of these white dwarf candidates, HDF-S 1444 and 895, are found to display significant proper motion, 21.1+/-7.9 and 34.9+/-8.0 mas yr^-1, and are consistent with being thick-disk or halo white dwarfs located at ~2 kpc. The other faint blue objects analyzed by Mendez & Minniti do not show any significant proper motion and are inconsistent with being halo white dwarfs; they do not contribute to the Galactic dark matter. The observed population of stars and white dwarfs is consistent with standard Galactic models.

Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the Data Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.