We present parallax observations and a detailed model atmosphere analysis of 54 cool and ultracool (Teff100pc, and include five stars within 30pc. Contrary to expectations, all but two of them have tangential velocities smaller than 150km/s thus suggesting Galactic disc membership. The oldest WDs in this sample have WD cooling ages of 10Gyr, providing a firm lower limit to the age of the thick disc population. Many of our targets have uncharacteristically large radii, indicating that they are low-mass WDs. It appears that we have detected the brighter population of cool and ultracool WDs near the Sun. The fainter population of ultracool CO-core WDs remain to be discovered in large numbers. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope should find these elusive, more massive ultracool WDs in the solar neighbourhood.

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/449/3966/table2 (Astrometry of cool WDs)