Bibcode
Beers, T. C.; Rossi, S.; Norris, J. E.; Ryan, S. G.; Molaro, P.; Rebolo, R.
Bibliographical reference
Space Science Reviews, v. 84, Issue 1/2, p. 139-144 (1998).
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4
1998
Journal
Citations
15
Refereed citations
10
Description
Ongoing spectroscopy and photometry of stars selected in the HK
objective-prism/interference-filter survey of Beers and colleagues has
resulted in the identification of many hundreds of additional stars in
the halo (and possibly the thick disk) of the Galaxy with abundances
[Fe/H] <= -2.0. A new calibration of the technique for estimation of
metal abundance based on a CaII K index as a function of broadband B - V
color is applied to obtain metallicities for stars observed with the SSO
2.3m and INT 2.5m telescopes. This new data is combined with other
samples of extremely metal-deficient stars (Ryan and Norris, 1991a;
Beers et al., 1992; Carney et al., 1994) to form a large database of
objects of low metallicity. The combined sample is examined and compared
with expectations derived from a Simple Model of Galactic chemical
evolution. There appears to be a statistically-significant deficit of
stars more metal-weak than [Fe/H] = -3.0. An abundance of [Fe/H] ~ -4.0
can be taken as the low-metallicity limit for presently-observable stars
in the Galaxy.