It is possible to reliably identify white dwarfs (WDs) without recourse to spectra, instead using photometric and astrometric measurements to distinguish them from main-sequence stars and quasars. WDs' colours can also be used to infer their intrinsic properties (effective temperature, surface gravity, etc.), but the results obtained must be interpreted with care. The difficulties stem from the existence of a solid angle degeneracy, as revealed by a full exploration of the likelihood, although this can be masked if a simple best-fitting approach is used. Conversely, this degeneracy can be broken if a Bayesian approach is adopted, as it is then possible to utilize the prior information on the surface gravities of WDs implied by spectroscopic fitting. The benefits of such an approach are particularly strong when applied to outliers, such as the candidate halo and ultracool WDs identified by Vidrih et al. A reanalysis of these samples confirms their results for the latter sample, but suggests that most of the halo candidates are thick-disc WDs in the tails of the photometric noise distribution.

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/399/699/haloWD (Estimated atmosphere model parameters (H and He), and Model selection quantities for the 34 V07 candidate halo WDs (tables 1, 2 and 3 of paper))

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/399/699/table4 (*Estimated model parameters of the 17 V07 candidate halo WDs with spectroscopic fits presented by Eisenstein et al. (2006, Cat. J/ApJS/167/40))

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/399/699/ultracool (Estimated atmosphere model parameters (H and He), and Model selection quantities for the 24 V07 candidate ultra-cool WDs (tables 5, 6 and 7 of paper))