Spectral indices of Galactic halo

These giants have distances ranging from 15 to 83kpc. As surveys reach farther into the Galaxy's halo with K giant samples, identification of giants becomes more difficult.

This is because the numbers of foreground halo K dwarfs rise for V magnitudes of 19-20, typical for halo giants at 100kpc. Our photometric survey uses the strength of the Mgb/H feature near 5170{AA} to weed K dwarfs out of the disk and thick disk, but we need spectroscopic measures of the strength of the Ca II K, Ca I {lambda}4227, and Mgb/H features to distinguish between the very metal-poor dwarfs and halo giants. Using a full error analysis of our spectroscopic measures, we show why a signal-to-noise ratio of ~15pixel^-1^ at Ca I {lambda}4227 and ~10 at Ca II K is needed for reliable luminosity discrimination.