STANDARD STAR NEWSLETTER No. 40 An electronic publication of the Working Group on Standard Stars IAU Commissions 25, 29, 30, 45 editor: Richard O. Gray April 2006 grayro@appstate.edu CONTENTS: Editorial p. 1 Note from the Working Group Chair, Chris Corbally p. 2 Notes and Abstracts: Adelman et al., Gray et al. p. 2 Contributions: Skiff p. 3 Meetings: JD~13, AAS p. 4 Large From the editor I am currently on sabbatical, and have visited Steward Observatory, Caltech and the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory. During the course of these visits I have been asked questions such as: ``Why can't I find stars with good spectral types so that I can calibrate the XXXX photometric system against the MK system?'' Replace ``XXXX'' with SDSS, 2MASS, etc. and you get the idea. These questions arise because the new surveys generally saturate or encounter non-linearities at magnitudes much much fainter than the MK primary standards, and indeed, considerably fainter than the great majority of MK surveys, including the Michigan catalog. Large scale surveys are proliferating, and promise to revolutionize astronomy, but at the same time, not a great deal is being done to connect these new surveys either photometrically or spectroscopically to the fundamental work which has been carried out over the past 5 decades. How can we bridge the gap? For the MK system, one way may be to exploit the large SDSS library of stellar spectra --- over 100,000 stellar spectra reside in the SDSS archives and await an enterprising classifier who is willing to take the time to classify, on the MK system, a representative sample of a few thousand stars. This sample could then be used as a training set to train an automatic technique, which would then tackle the remaining spectra. Any takers? On the photometric side, I am happy to see that some efforts are underway to find transformation equations which will link SDSS photometry with other photometric systems (see Allen et al., below on page 4). Richard Gray, editor grayro@appstate.edu A Note From the Chair International Astronomical Union Working Group on Standard Stars (WGSS) It is April already and the IAU XXVIth General Assembly this August in Prague is rapidly approaching. It is going to be a productive and enjoyable GA, so please remember that the deadline for early registration is 15 May. I am very much hoping that you will be able to come and join in our Working Group meeting. We need all the wisdom and ideas we can get to settle on a strategy for the next three years that is really going to help researchers, both ourselves and others less involved in the making and maintenance of standards, get the best out of their observations and data. We need to think how we can best help the surveys that are in progress or being planned. We need to find ways to communicate with those involved in such surveys. We have a time for our WGSS session at the IAU-GA. It is on Wednesday 16 August from 16:00 until 17:30. Part of our 90 minute session should be strategic planning for the next three years of the WGSS, but a good part should also be the presentation of important work recently achieved. {\it Please let me know if you have such a contribution to make to our meeting.} Your ideas for the planning part are also most welcome. We shall also need a little business time to settle on who shall be leading the WGSS for the next three years. I've no monopoly on this and think that a fresh face would be good. Drop me the word if you are willing! Please also note these meetings which closely concern our WGSS: the JD13 (Tuesday 22nd and Wednesday 23rd), SPS1 (Wednesday 16th, [some conflict!], and Thursday 17th), Commission 25 (Friday 18th, session 2), Commission 30 (Friday 18th, session 1), and Commission 45 (the 14:00-15:30 session immediately before that of the WGSS). The more exchange of ideas and research that we can have together, the better! See you in Prague hopefully, Chris Corbally corbally@as.arizona.edu Abstracts Elemental abundance analyses with DAO spectrograms XXX. The normal A0 IV star gamma Gem Saul J. Adelman^{1,2}, Austin F. Gulliver^{2,3}, and Pongsakorn Kaewkornmaung^1 $^1$ Department of Physics, The Citadel, 171 Moultrie Street, Charleston, SC 29409 $^2$ Guest Investigator, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, National Research Council of Canada, 5071 W. Saanich Road, Victoria V8X 4M6 Canada $^3$ Department of Physics, Brandon University, Brandon, MB R7A 6A9 Canada} We performed an elemental abundance analysis of the normal A0 IV star $\gamma$ Geminorum with high quality data that was consistent with previous studies of this series. This was to compare the results with solar values and those of other stars with similar effective temperatures and surface gravities. The spectra obtained have S/N ratios at the continuum of 400 to 1200 with a two-pixel resolution of 0.072A. We measured the spectrum with REDUCE and performed a fine analysis of the metal lines with ATLAS9 models and WIDTH9. submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics For preprints, contact adelmans@citadel.edu Contributions to the Nearby Stars (NStars) Project: Spectroscopy of Stars Earlier than M0 within 40 parsecs: The Southern Sample R.O. Gray^1, C.J. Corbally^2, R.F. Garrison^3, M.T. McFadden^1, E.J. Bubar^{1,4},C.E. McGahee^1, A.A. O'Donoghue^5 \& E.R. Knox^5 $^1$ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC. $^2$ Vatican Observatory Research Group, Steward Observatory, Tucson, AZ $^3$ David Dunlap Observatory, P.O. Box 360, Station A, Richmond Hill, ON, Canada $^4$ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, SC $^5$ Department of Physics, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY We have obtained spectra, spectral types and basic physical parameters for the nearly 3600 dwarf and giant stars earlier than M0 in the Hipparcos catalog within 40pc of the Sun. Here we report on results for 1676 stars in the southern hemisphere observed at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory and Steward Observatory. These results include new, precise, homogeneous spectral types, basic physical parameters (including the effective temperature, surface gravity, and metallicity, [M/H]) and measures of the chromospheric activity of our program stars. We include notes on astrophysically interesting stars in this sample, the metallicity distribution of the solar neighborhood and a table of solar analogues. We also demonstrate that the bimodal nature of the distribution of the chromospheric activity parameter log R'HK$ depends strongly on the metallicity, and we explore the nature of the ``low-metallicity'' chromospherically active K-type dwarfs. Accepted by the Astronomical Journal For preprints, contact grayro@appstate.edu Contributions Update on General Catalogue of Spectral Classifications Brian A. Skiff^1 1 Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff AZ The catalogue described in SSN 37 (Oct 2004) has continued grow. The version copied to the Strasbourg VizieR catalogue utility in May 2005 contains about 150,000 entries, while the current working version has over 200,000. The literature survey is complete from 1922 to 1959, but includes most later large MK surveys plus much recent data. All the primary MK standards are included and marked by a special flag. For a number of reasons the main effort for now will be to work forward chronologically through the literature. The file provides standard 19-digit `bibcode' citations for every entry, and a VizieR search-report shows these as direct links to ADS, so the source paper can be retrieved on-line in most cases. We will probably continue to make copies at VizieR about once per year. The VizieR catalogue description and links to the bulk file and search utility are here: http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?III/233 My in-house working file is copied to the Lowell ftp area quasi-weekly, and grows at the rate of about 3000 stars per month. ``Today's" version can be found here: ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/bas/starcats/mktypes.dat ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/bas/starcats/mktypes.journ ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/bas/starcats/mktypes.ReadMe ...for the catalogue file (18Mb), short log file, and ReadMe file in CDS format. All are flat ASCII text files. Meetings Joint Discussion 13, ``Exploiting Large Surveys for Galactic Astronomy" Dates: 22-23 August 2006 Location: Prague, Czech Republic Program: Review of major surveys: photometric, spectroscopic, radial velocity, astrometric, variable star; Impact of these data on models of the formation and evolution of the Galaxy and its substructures; Limitations of surveys: photometric accuracy, spectroscopic discrimination, calibration, parameterization, population synthesis; Future strategies for space- and ground-based surveys; Contributed proposals for optimizing surveys and discussion Contact email: Christopher Corbally, corbally@as.arizona.edu See http://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/jd13/ for more information. American Astronomical Society There were a number of posters (listed below) at the recent (January, Washington DC) meeting of the American Astronomical Society meeting of direct interest to readers of this newsletter. The abstracts of these posters may be found on the web at www.aas.org (look under Meetings, Past Meetings and abstracts, Washington D.C., 207th meeting of the AAS,author index, first author's last name; the poster number is given at the beginning of the title). If you personally know of posters or talks (with abstracts available online) of similar interest at meetings you have attended, please 1) encourage the authors to send a short abstract to the SSN and/or 2) send me the title and authors and web address of the abstract. D. Allen,, C. T. Rodgers, R. Canterna, E. Hausel, E. Flores, J. A. Smith, ``[28.03] Fundamental Transformation Equations Between the u'g'r'i'z' and UBVRCIC Filter Systems'' M.P. Vautier, C.L. Laverty, M.D. Joner, ``[28.04] Standardization of Halpha Photometry'' B. L. Welther, ``[58.07] A Stellar Decade in the Career of Annie Jump Cannon: 1915-1925.'' T.M. Brown, M. Everett, D.W. Latham, D.G. Monet, ``[110.12] Star Classification for the Kepler Input Catalog: From Images to Stellar Parameters'' V. Belokurov, G.M Seabroke, N.W. Evans, G. Gilmore, ``[123.02] RAVE: Automatic Spectral Classification'' U. Munari, M. Fiorucci, RAVE Collaboration, ``[123.08] Atmospheric Parameters along the MK Sequence from Analysis of RAVE Spectra of HD Stars'' J.A. Smith, S.S. Allam, D.L. Tucker, J.L. Stute, C.T. Rodgers, C. Stoughton, T.C. Beers, R.S. French, P.M. McGehee, ``[131.11] The u'g'r'i'z' Southern Hemisphere Standard Star Network'' Contributions to the next Newsletter, due out in October 2006, will be welcomed at any time by grayro@appstate.edu. WHEN SUBMITTING AN ABSTRACT, PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING TEMPLATE IF POSSIBLE: \begin{center}{\Large\bf{ Title }}\\{\bf{ A. Author$^1$ and B. Author$^2$ }}\\{\footnotesize $^1$ Institute One and Address \\ $^2$ Institute Two and Address }\end{center} \smallskip{ TEXT OF ABSTRACT }\\{\bf Accepted by} JOURNAL \\{\it For preprints, contact} YOUR ELECTRONIC ADDRESS \end{verbatim} \end{document}