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Paper: High S/N Spectroscopy and Radial Velocities of Field BHB Tip Stars Similar to KIC 1718290
Volume: 481, 6th Meeting on Hot Subdwarf Stars and Related Objects
Page: 87
Authors: Green, E.; O'Connell, C.; Fontaine, G.
Abstract: In a followup to Østensen et al.'s (2012) discovery of the first g-mode pulsator found on the classical blue horizontal branch (BHB), we present atmospheric parameters for ten blue field stars known to have similar effective temperatures and gravities, plus radial velocities for seven of them, as a first step towards investigating the overall properties of these stars. All of the field BHB tip stars have temperatures and gravities that place them in a narrow region below the main sequence and above the gap separating them from the hotter and more compact sdB stars. Interestingly, half of the ten BHB tip stars exhibit higher metallicities and greater than solar He abundances similar to, although not quite as high as, the BHB pulsator KIC 1718290, while the other half have much lower metallicities and He abundances, more typical of those observed in sdB stars. RV's determined from five or more MMT spectra each for KIC 1718290 and seven of the other BHB tip stars show that none exhibit significant RV variations at the 2 to 3 km s-1 level on time scales shorter than a day or two; the variations were no larger for two stars reobserved after an interval of two months nor for one star that was observed over two years. Such velocity variations are comparable to those we have measured previously for sdB stars with MS companions, several of which are now known to have orbital periods of the order of a couple of years. The magnitudes and galactic latitudes of the stars in our BHB tip sample are consistent with membership in the galactic disk, rather than the halo.
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