The star formation history in the solar neighborhood as told by massive
  white dwarfs
  White dwarfs are the remnants of low and intermediate mass stars. Because of
electron degeneracy, their evolution is just a simple gravothermal process of
cooling. Recently, thanks to Gaia data, it has been possible to construct the
luminosity function of massive (0.9 < M/Msun < 1.1) white dwarfs in the solar
neighborhood (d < 100 pc). Since the lifetime of their progenitors is very
short, the birth times of both, parents and daughters, are very close and allow
to reconstruct the (effective) star formation rate. This rate started growing
from zero during the early Galaxy and reached a maximum 6-7 Gyr ago. It
declined and ~5 Gyr ago started to climb once more reaching a maximum 2 - 3 Gyr
in the past and decreased since then. There are some traces of a recent star
formation burst, but the method used here is not appropriate for recently born
white dwarfs.
