Speaker
Prof.
Kim Venn
(University of Victoria)
Description
The Pristine Survey is a narrow-band photometric survey focused on the
metallicity-sensitive Ca H & K lines and conducted in the northern hemisphere
with the wide-field MegaCam on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The
main aims of the survey are to uncover a statistical sample of the most
metal-poor stars in the Galaxy, to further characterize the smallest
Milky Way satellites, and to map the metal-poor substructure in the Galactic
halo. In addition, we expect to increase the number of rare chemically peculiar
metal-poor stars that are important constraints for nucleosynthesis (r-II stars,
alpha-challenged stars, etc). High-resolution spectroscopic follow-up observations
pf the brightest targets have begun with the CFHT Espadons spectrograph. Initial
chemical abundances of several very metal-poor stars are typical of stars in the
Galactic halo, but the prospects for finding more rare objects are exciting.
Primary author
Prof.
Kim Venn
(University of Victoria)