Metallicities of Pristine stars

In this work, we use the first results of a medium-resolution spectroscopic follow-up to refine the selection criteria for finding extremely metal-poor stars ([Fe/H]<=-3.0) in the Pristine survey. We consider methods by which stars can be selected from available broad-band and infrared photometry plus the additional Pristine narrow-band photometry.

The sample consists of 205 stars in the magnitude range 14<V<18. Applying the photometric selection criteria cuts the sample down to 149 stars, and from these we report a success rate of 70 per cent for finding stars with [Fe/H]<=-2.5 and 22 per cent for finding stars with [Fe/H]<=-3.0. These statistics compare favourably with other surveys that search for extremely metal-poor stars, namely an improvement by a factor of ~4-5 for recovering stars with [Fe/H]<=-3.0.