Bibcode
Krugler, Julie A.; Beers, T. C.; Lee, Y.; Sivarani, T.; Marsteller, B.; Wilhelm, R.; Allende Prieto, C.; Frebel, A.; Norris, J. E.; Johnson, J.; Ivans, I.; Yanny, B.; Rockosi, C.; Morrison, H.; Newberg, H. J.; Knapp, J.
Bibliographical reference
American Astronomical Society Meeting 210, #74.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.180
Advertised on:
5
2007
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
There are several hundred thousand R = 2000 stellar spectra reported in
the final public release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-I) and
the continuation project SEGUE (Sloan Extension for Galactic Exploration
and Understanding), which has completed roughly half of its scheduled
set of observations to date.
The stars in this sample were targeted for a wide variety of reasons,
and hence do not represent a sample from which an unbiased metallicity
distribution function (MDF) of stars in the halo or thick-disk
populations may be drawn. However, there exist over 9000 stars with
estimated metallicities [Fe/H]>-2.0 and effective temperatures in the
range 5000K < Teff < 7000K among this sample, based on application
of the SDSS/SEGUE spectroscopic parameter analysis pipeline. We have
continued to refine estimates of the stellar parameters for these stars,
using an automated synthetic spectrum approach. This technique produces
estimates of [Fe/H] as well as [C/Fe] (or upper limits on these
quantitites) based on MOOG syntheses of the region of spectrum around
the CaII K line and the CH G band, respectively. This sample represents,
by a factor of more than three, the largest database of very metal-poor
stars yet assembled. A least 1000 of these stars have g < 16.5, and
hence are amenable to high-resolution spectroscopic studies with
presently available large-aperture telescopes. We report on the catalog
of these stars, and consider the shape of the low-metallicity tail of
the halo MDF derived from these data.
Funding for the SDSS and SDSS-II has been provided by the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science
Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck
Society, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSS
Web Site is http://www.sdss.org/.