Bibcode
Beers, Timothy C.; Lee, Y.; Sivarani, T.; Marsteller, B.; Krugler, J.; Wilhelm, R.; Allende Prieto, C.; Norris, J.; Johnson, J.; Ivans, I.; Yanny, B.; Rockosi, C.; Morrison, H.; Newberg, H. J.; Knapp, J.
Bibliographical reference
2007 AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, American Astronomical Society Meeting 209, #168.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.1139
Advertised on:
12
2006
Citations
2
Refereed citations
2
Description
There are some 194,000 R = 2000 stellar spectra reported in the final
public release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-I), known as DR-5.
Setting aside the stars observed during the course of early tests for
the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE),
which will be considered in the future, this leaves a total of about
168,000 stellar spectra. 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 some 6500 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
analysis pipeline described in other contributions at this meeting.
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/.