The Edinburgh-Cape Blue Object Survey — I. Description of the survey

• Published in: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Vol. 287; no. 4; pp. 848 - 866
• Main Authors: Stobie, R. S., Kilkenny, D., O'Donoghue, D., Chen, A., Koen, C., Morgan, D. H., Barrow, J., Buckley, D. A. H., Cannon, R. D., Cass, C. J. P., Cranston, M. R., Drinkwater, M., Hartley, M., Hawkins, M. R. S., Hughes, S., Humphries, C. M., Mac, GillivrayH. T., McKenzie, P. B., Parker, Q. A., Read, M., Russell, K. S., Savage, A., Thomson, E. B., Tritton, S. B., Waldron, J. D., Warner, B., Watson, F. G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Science Ltd 01-06-1997
• Subjects: quasars: general; stars: early-type; stars: horizontal branch; subdwarfs; surveys; white dwarfs
• ISSN: 0035-8711; 1365-2966
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/287.4.848

The Edinburgh-Cape Blue Object Survey is a major survey to discover blue stellar objects brighter than B ~ 18 in the southern sky. It is planned to cover an area of sky of 10 000 deg2 with ∣b∣ > 30° and δ < 0°. The blue stellar objects are selected by automatic techniques from U and B pairs of UK Schmidt Telescope plates scanned with the COSMOS measuring machine. Follow-up photometry and spectroscopy are being obtained with the SAAO telescopes to classify objects brighter than B = 16.5. This paper describes the survey, the techniques used to extract the blue stellar objects, the photometric methods and accuracy, the spectroscopic classification, and the limits and completeness of the survey.