Southern stars of high radial velocity

The slit spectra reveal that many of these objects are F-K stars of low metal abundance, including some stars apparently as metal weak as any presently known. Radial velocities were derived from the slit spectra to examine the reliability of the large objective-prism velocities.

The slit results confirm that the majority of the stars are indeed of high velocity, but show that the objective-prism technique tends to produce velocities systematically too large in magnitude by about 40km/s. It was also found that a large objective-prism velocity that is of low weight or from spectra near a plate edge is likely spurious. A search of the 10000 entries in Stock's catalogue yields 205 objects with radial-velocity magnitudes over 130km/s.