Apparently normal, high-latitude B stars from the Edinburgh–Cape survey – II

Abstract

Low-dispersion spectrograms and UBV photometry are used to carry out a simple analysis of a second sample of apparently normal, high galactic latitude B stars detected in the Edinburgh–Cape faint blue object survey. The sample is bigger than that in Paper I and contains more faint stars. Of the 30 stars, eight are classified as ‘weak-line’ stars and appear very similar to stars in the blue horizontal branch of globular clusters. A further eight stars are sdB stars (including two possible binaries), and 11 stars appear to be normal B stars. Nine of these have distances from the Galactic plane in the approximate range 1≲z≲4 kpc, and two are probably much more distant. These results, and those of Paper I, indicate that B stars at large distances from the Galactic plane (z>5 kpc) must be very rare. Three stars do not fall into obvious categories; two of them are helium-rich and all may be hot subdwarfs.