Catalogues of Blue Horizontal Branch Stars Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Culpan R.
  2. Pelisoli I.
  3. Geier S.
  4. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

Blue horizontal-branch stars evolve from low-mass stars that have completed their main-sequence lifetimes and undergone a helium flash at the end of their red-giant phase. As such, blue horizontal-branch stars are very old objects that can be used as markers in studies of the Galactic structure and formation history. To create a clean sky catalogue of blue horizontal-branch stars, we cross-matched the Gaia data release 2 (DR2) dataset with existing reference catalogues to define selection criteria based on Gaia DR2parameters. Following the publication of Gaia early data release 3 (EDR3), these methods were verified and subsequently applied to this latest release. Previous catalogues of blue horizontal-branch stars were developed using spectral analyses or were restricted to individual globular clusters. The purpose of this catalogue is to identify a set of blue horizontal-branch star candidates that have been selected using photometric and astrometric observations and exhibits a low contamination rate. This has been deemed important as the success of the Gaia mission has changed the way that targets are selected for large-scale spectroscopic surveys, meaning that far fewer spectra will be acquired for blue horizontal-branch stars in the future unless they are specifically targeted. We cross-matched reference blue horizontal-branch datasets with the Gaia DR2 database and defined two sets of selection criteria. Firstly, in Gaia DR2 - colour and absolute G magnitude space, and secondly, in Gaia DR2 - colour and reduced proper motion space. The main-sequence contamination in both subsets of the catalogue was reduced, at the expense of completeness, by concentrating on the Milky Way's Galactic halo, where relatively young main-sequence stars were not expected. The entire catalogue is limited to those stars with no apparent neighbours within 5 arcsec. These methods were verified and subsequently applied to theGaia Early Data Release 3 (EDR3). We present a catalogue, based on Gaia EDR3, of 57377 blue horizontal-branch stars. The Gaia EDR3 parallax was used in selecting 16794 candidates and the proper motions were used to identify a further 40583 candidates.

Keywords
  1. horizontal-branch-stars
  2. halo-stars
  3. proper-motions
  4. visible-astronomy
  5. trigonometric-parallax
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2021A&A...654A.107C
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/654/A107
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/654/A107
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.36540107

Access

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History

2021-10-19T08:11:36Z
Resource record created
2021-10-19T08:11:36Z
Created
2023-06-07T07:52:34Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr