Blue horizontal branch stars

DOI

A complete sample of blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars in the magnitude range 13.0<V<16.5 is isolated in two Galactic fields that have previously been searched for RR Lyrae variables: SA 57 in the Northern Polar Cap and the Lick Astrograph field RR 7 in the Anticenter (l=183{deg}, b=+37{deg}). These BHB stars are a subset of the AF stars found in the Case Low-Dispersion Northern Survey; lists of these AF stars were made available by the late Nick Sanduleak. The completeness of the sample was confirmed by reference to the photometric survey of SA 57 by Stobie & Ishida (1987AJ93..... 624S) that is complete to fainter than V=18. In the color range 0.00<(B-V)0<+0.20, we can distinguish the BHB stars among these AF stars by comparing them both with well known local field horizontal branch (FHB) stars and also the BHB members of the halo globular clusters M3 and M92. The criteria for this comparison include (1) a (u-B)K color index (derived from photoelectric observations using the Stromgren u filter and the Johnson B and V filters) that measures the size of the Balmer jump, (2) a spectrophotometric index A that measures the steepness of the Balmer jump, and (3) a parameter D_0.2_ that is the mean width of the H{gamma} and H{delta} Balmer lines measured at 20 percent of the continuum level. These criteria give consistent results in separating BHB stars from higher gravity main sequence AF stars in the color range 0.00<(B-V)0<+0.20. All three photometric and spectrophotometric criteria were measured for 35 stars in the SA 57 field and 37 stars in the RR 7 field that are in the color range (B-V)0<+0.23 and in the magnitude range 13.013.0 and (B-V)0<+0.23 are not BHB stars but have surface gravities that are more like those expected for main sequence stars. Their measured metallicities lie in the range -0.2<[Fe/H]<-2.3. The more metal-poor of these stars are probably similar to the blue metal-poor stars that have been discussed by Preston et al. (1994AJ....108..538P) which, while they probably include globular cluster blue stragglers as a subset, must also comprise stars of other types.

Cone search capability for table J/AJ/108/1722/table1 (SA 57 field stars identifications and positions)

Cone search capability for table J/AJ/108/1722/table2 (RR7 field stars identifications and positions)

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.51081722
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/108/1722
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/AJ/108/1722
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/108/1722
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/108/1722
Provenance
Creator Kinman T.D.; Suntzeff N.B.; Kraft R.P.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2000
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Interdisciplinary Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy