The Edinburgh-Cape Blue Object Survey - III. Zone 2; galactic latitudes -30? > b > -40?

Abstract

The Edinburgh–Cape Blue Object Survey seeks to identify point sources with an ultraviolet excess. Results for zone 2 of the survey are presented here, covering that part of the South Galactic Cap between 30◦ and 40◦ from the Galactic plane and south of about −12. ◦ 3 of declination. Edinburgh–Cape zone 2 comprises 66 UK Schmidt Telescope fields covering about 1730 deg2, in which we find some 892 blue objects, including 423 hot subdwarfs (∼47 per cent); 128 white dwarfs (∼14 per cent); 25 cataclysmic variables (∼3 per cent); 119 binaries (∼13 per cent), mostly composed of a hot subdwarf and a main-sequence F or G star; 66 horizontal branch stars (∼7 per cent) and 48 ‘star-like’ extragalactic objects (∼5 per cent). A further 362 stars observed in the survey, mainly low-metallicity F- and G-type stars, are also listed. Both low-dispersion spectroscopic classification and UBV photometry are presented for almost all of the hot objects and either spectroscopy or photometry (or both) for the cooler ones.