Title: A Catalogue of Spectroscopically Confirmed White Dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4
Authors: Daniel J. Eisenstein, James Liebert, Hugh C. Harris, S.J. Kleinmann, Atsuko Nitta, Nicole Silvestri, Scott A. Anderson, J.C. Barentine, Howard J. Brewington, J. Brinkmann, Michael Harvanek, Jurek Krzesinski, Eric H. Neilsen Jr., Dan Long, Donald P. Schneider, Stephanie A. Snedden

Researchers present a catalogue of 9316 spectroscopically confirmed white dwarfs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4. They have selected the stars through photometric cuts and spectroscopic modelling, backed up by a set of visual inspections. Roughly 6000 of the stars are new discoveries, roughly doubling the number of spectroscopically confirmed white dwarfs.
They analyse the stars by performing temperature and surface gravity fits to grids of pure hydrogen and helium atmospheres. Among the rare outliers are a set of presumed helium-core DA white dwarfs with estimated masses below 0.3 solar masses, including two candidates that may be the lowest masses yet found. The researchers also present a list of 928 hot subdwarfs.

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(Ed - corrected title)

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

BTW, SDSS Data Release 5 is now available, making the whole quarter of the sky SPSS was to map covered.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman