The Stellar Component of the Hamburg Schmidt Survey

Abstract

We report on follow-up spectroscopy of stellar candidates from the Hamburg Schmidt survey, an objective prism survey which primarily aims at quasars in the northern sky. In a pilot project 59 stellar candidates with magnitudes ranging from 13 ^m_· 5 to 18 ^m_· 5 have been observed at a spectral resolution of 4Å. 54 of of these were indeed stars of either of four spectral classes: white dwarfs, subluminous B- or O stars, horizontal branch A stars or sdF stars. Only two objects turned out to be non-stellar but bright low-redshift quasars. A spectroscopic binary star, an UX UMa star and an unclassified star with an almost featureless spectrum were also discovered.

Visiting Astronomer, German-Spanish Astronomical Center, Calar Alto, operated by the Max-Planck- Institut für Astronomie Heidelberg jointly with the Spanish National Commission for Astronomy