| 1. |
- Christlieb, N., et al.
(författare)
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The stellar content of the Hamburg/ESO survey - IV. Selection of candidate metal-poor stars
- 2008
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 484:3, s. 721-732
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present the quantitative methods used for selecting candidate metal-poor stars in the Hamburg/ESO objective-prism survey (HES). The selection is based on the strength of the Ca II K line, B - V colors (both measured directly from the digital HES spectra), as well as J - K colors from the 2 Micron All Sky Survey. The KP index for Ca II K can be measured from the HES spectra with an accuracy of 1.0 angstrom, and a calibration of the HES B - V colors, using CCD photometry, yields a 1-sigma uncertainty of 0.07 mag for stars in the color range 0.3 < B - V < 1.4. These accuracies make it possible to reliably reject stars with [Fe/H] > -2.0 without sacrificing completeness at the lowest metallicities. A test of the selection using 1121 stars of the HK survey of Beers, Preston, and Shectman present on HES plates suggests that the completeness at [Fe/H] < -3.5 is close to 100% and that, at the same time, the contamination of the candidate sample with false positives is low: 50% of all stars with [Fe/H] > -2.5 and 97% of all stars with [Fe/H] > -2.0 are rejected. The selection was applied to 379 HES fields, covering a nominal area of 8853 deg(2) of the southern high Galactic latitude sky. The candidate sample consists of 20 271 stars in the magnitude range 10 less than or similar to B less than or similar to 18. A comparison of the magnitude distribution with that of the HK survey shows that the magnitude limit of the HES sample is about 2mag fainter. Taking the overlap of the sky areas covered by both surveys into account, it follows that the survey volume for metal-poor stars has been increased by the HES by about a factor of 10 with respect to the HK survey. We have already identified several very rare objects with the HES, including, e. g., the three most heavy-element deficient stars currently known.
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| 2. |
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| 4. |
- Hayek, W, et al.
(författare)
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The Hamburg/ESO R-process enhanced star survey (HERES) IV. Detailed abundance analysis and age dating of the strongly r-process enhanced stars CS 29491-069 and HE 1219-0312
- 2009
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 504:2, s. 511-524
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report on a detailed abundance analysis of two strongly r-process enhanced, very metal-poor stars newly discovered in the HERES project, CS 29491-069 ([Fe/H] = -2.51, [r/Fe] = +1.1) and HE 1219-0312 ([Fe/H] = -2.96, [r/Fe] = +1.5). The analysis is based on high-quality VLT/UVES spectra and MARCS model atmospheres. We detect lines of 15 heavy elements in the spectrum of CS 29491-069, and 18 in HE 1219-0312; in both cases including the Th II 4019 angstrom line. The heavy-element abundance patterns of these two stars are mostly well-matched to scaled solar residual abundances not formed by the s-process. We also compare the observed pattern with recent high-entropy wind (HEW) calculations, which assume core-collapse supernovae of massive stars as the astrophysical environment for the r-process, and find good agreement for most lanthanides. The abundance ratios of the lighter elements strontium, yttrium, and zirconium, which are presumably not formed by the main r-process, are reproduced well by the model. Radioactive dating for CS 29491-069 with the observed thorium and rare-earth element abundance pairs results in an average age of 9.5 Gyr, when based on solar r-process residuals, and 17.6 Gyr, when using HEW model predictions. Chronometry seems to fail in the case of HE 1219-0312, resulting in a negative age due to its high thorium abundance. HE 1219-0312 could therefore exhibit an overabundance of the heaviest elements, which is sometimes called an "actinide boost".
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| 5. |
- Perez, A. E. Garcia, et al.
(författare)
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A new sample of extremely/ultra metal-poor stars
- 2008
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Ingår i: Physica Scripta. - 0031-8949 .- 1402-4896. ; T133, s. 014036-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A sample of 30 very metal-poor stars from the Hamburg-European Southern Observatory (ESO) objective-prism survey have been observed at high spectral resolution at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) using the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES). Two of the observed stars are very interesting not only because of their very low iron content, approximately four orders of magnitude lower than the solar value, but also because we detected the neutral lithium resonance line at 670.8 nm. Hydrogen lines suggest that the two observed stars have effective temperatures around 6000-6250K and according to isochrones, they are either on the main-sequence or on the subgiant branch, in which case they would probably be the most metal-poor dwarfs or warm subgiants with lithium detections known. These detections would allow to determine more accurately the slope of the trend of the lithium abundance with [Fe/H] than was possible with samples of unevolved stars restricted to higher metallicities.
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| 6. |
- Schoerck, T, et al.
(författare)
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The stellar content of the Hamburg/ESO survey V. The metallicity distribution function of the Galactic halo
- 2009
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 507:2, s. 817-832
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We determine the metallicity distribution function (MDF) of the Galactic halo by means of a sample of 1638 metal-poor stars selected from the Hamburg/ESO objective-prism survey (HES). The sample was corrected for minor biases introduced by the strategy for spectroscopic follow-up observations of the metal-poor candidates, namely "best and brightest stars first". Comparison of the metallicities [Fe/H] of the stars determined from moderate-resolution (i.e., R similar to 2000) follow-up spectra with results derived from abundance analyses based on high-resolution spectra (i.e., R > 20 000) shows that the [Fe/H] estimates used for the determination of the halo MDF are accurate to within 0.3 dex, once highly C-rich stars are eliminated. We determined the selection function of the HES, which must be taken into account for a proper comparison between the HES MDF with MDFs of other stellar populations or those predicted by models of Galactic chemical evolution. The latter show a reasonable agreement with the overall shape of the HES MDF for [Fe/H] > -3.6, but only a model of Salvadori et al. (2007) with a critical metallicity for low-mass star formation of Z(cr) = 10(-3.4) Z(circle dot) reproduces the sharp drop at [Fe/H] similar to -3.6 present in the HES MDF. Although currently about ten stars at [Fe/H] < -3.6 are known, the evidence for the existence of a tail of the halo MDF extending to [Fe/H] similar to -5.5 is weak from the sample considered in this paper, because it only includes two stars [Fe/H] < -3.6. Therefore, a comparison with theoretical models has to await larger statistically complete and unbiased samples. A comparison of the MDF of Galactic globular clusters and of dSph satellites to the Galaxy shows qualitative agreement with the halo MDF, derived from the HES, once the selection function of the latter is included. However, statistical tests show that the differences between these are still highly significant.
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