A dedicated northern search for the first stars

Beers, Timothy; Norris, John; Allende Prieto, Carlos; Aoki, Wako; Asplund, Martin; Bessell, Michael; Christlieb, Norbert; Frebel, Anna; Johnson, Jennifer; Melendez, Jorge; Sneden, Christopher; Yong, David
Bibliographical reference

NOAO Proposal ID #2008A-0179

Advertised on:
2
2008
Number of authors
12
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
We propose to continue a northern sky program using high resolution, moderate S/N spectra to discover the chemically oldest stars - ultra metal-poor dwarfs and giants drawn from the Hamburg/ESO and SEGUE surveys. With these data we seek to (1) discover more stars with [Fe/H] < -4.0 (only three of which are known and all of which our group has discovered) to constrain the nature of the first stars; (2) measure the Li abundance for more stars with [Fe/H] < -4.0, to investigate further the non-detection on this element in the subgiant HE1327-2326 ([Fe/H] = -5.4) and its implication for Big Bang Nucleosynthesis; and (3) discover further r-process enhanced metal-poor stars with detectable Th and U, for cosmo-chronometric age determinations.