Spectroscopic Survey of Field stars: A search for Metal-Poor stars

We have undertaken a spectroscopic survey of field stars to find metal-poor objects among them. Observations are carried out using OMR spectrograph attached to 2.3m telescope at VBO Kavalur, India. The sample of candidate stars are chosen from prismatic survey of Beers and his collaborators covering a large part of the Galaxy. At the first phase of this project, the analysis is completed for a set of 19 relatively hot stars (Teff in 6000 to 8000K range). The metallicities of the program stars are derived by synthesizing the spectrum in the wavelength range 4900 to 5400A for different metallicities and matching them with the observed spectra. More than half of the candidate stars were found to show [Fe/H] in -0.7 to -1.2 range. Two most metal-poor stars have [Fe/H] values of -1.3 and -1.8. It appears that metal-poor candidates suggested by Beers et al. from their prismatic survey has a very significant fraction of metal-poor stars. The significantly metal-poor stars found so far would be studied in detail using high resolution spectra to understand nucleosynthesis processes that might have occurred in early Galaxy.