The nature of super-metal-rich stars. Detailed abundance analysis of 8 super-metal-rich star candidates

We provide detailed abundance analyses of 8 candidate super-metal-richstars. Five of them are confirmed to have [Fe/H]>0.2 dex, thegenerally-accepted limit for super-metal-richness. Furthermore, wederive abundances of several elements and find that the stars followtrends seen in previous studies of metal-rich stars. Ages are estimatedfrom isochrones and velocities calculated. We find that there do existvery metal-rich stars that are older than 10 Gyr. This is contrary towhat is found in several recent studies of the galactic age-metallicityrelation. This is tentative evidence that there might not exist aone-to-one relation between age and metallicity for all stars. This isnot surprising considering the current models of the independentevolution of the different galactic components. We also find that onestar, HD 182572, could with ~ 75% chance be a thick disk star with, forthe thick disk, an extremely high metallicity at 0.34 dex. This star is,intriguingly, also somewhat enhanced in the alpha -elements. Based onobservations obtained at the McDonald Observatory.