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A&A 431, 143-148 (2005)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20041830
The stellar content of the Hamburg/ESO survey
III. Field horizontal-branch stars in the Galaxy
N. Christlieb1, T. C. Beers2, C. Thom3, R. Wilhelm4, S. Rossi5, C. Flynn6, L. Wisotzki7 and D. Reimers11 Hamburger Sternwarte, Universität Hamburg, Gojenbergsweg 112, 21029 Hamburg, Germany
e-mail: [nchristlieb;dreimers]@hs.uni-hamburg.de
2 Department of Physics & Astronomy and JINA: Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
e-mail: beers@pa.msu.edu
3 Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia
e-mail: cthom@astro.swin.edu.au
4 Department of Physics, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA
e-mail: ron.wilhelm@ttu.edu
5 Departamento de Astronomia Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, Universidade de São Paulo, 05508-900 São Paulo SP, Brazil
e-mail: rossi@astro.iag.usp.br
6 Tuorla Observatory, University of Turku, Väisäläntie 20, 21500 Piikkiö, Finland
e-mail: cflynn@utu.fi
7 Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
e-mail: lutz@aip.de
(Received 11 August 2004 / Accepted 20 October 2004 )
Abstract
We present a sample of 8321 candidate Field Horizontal-Branch (FHB) stars
selected by automatic spectral classification in the digital data base of
the Hamburg/ESO objective-prism survey. The stars are distributed over 8225
square degrees of the southern sky, at
. The average
distance of the sample, assuming that they are all FHB stars, is
9.8 kpc,
and distances of up to
30 kpc are reached. Moderate-resolution
spectroscopic follow-up observations and
UBV photometry of 125 test sample
stars demonstrate that the contamination of the full candidate sample with
main-sequence A-type stars is
<16%, while it would be up to 50% in
a flux-limited sample at high galactic latitudes. Hence more than
6800 of our FHB candidates are expected to be genuine FHB stars. The
candidates are being used as distance probes for high-velocity clouds and
for studies of the structure and kinematics of the Galactic halo.
Key words: stars: horizontal-branch -- Galaxy: halo -- Galaxy: kinematics and dynamics -- surveys -- methods: statistical
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© ESO 2005