The Hamburg/ESO R-process Enhanced Star survey (HERES). I. Project description, and discovery of two stars with strong enhancements of neutron-capture elements

We report on a dedicated effort to identify and study metal-poor stars strongly enhanced in r-process elements ([r/Fe]>1 dex; hereafter r-IIstars), the Hamburg/ESO R-process Enhanced Star survey (HERES).Moderate-resolution (∼2 Å) follow-up spectroscopy has been obtained for metal-poor giant candidates selected from the Hamburg/ESO objective-prism survey (HES) as well as the HK survey to identify sharp-lined stars with [Fe/H]<-2.5 dex. For several hundred confirmed metal-poor giants brighter than B∼ 16.5 mag (most of them from theHES), ``snapshot'' spectra (R∼ 20 000; S/N ∼ 30 per pixel) are being obtained with VLT/UVES, with the main aim of finding the 2-3% r-II stars expected to be among them. These are studied in detail by means of higher resolution and higher S/N spectra. In this paper we describe a pilot study based on a set of 35 stars, including 23 from the HK survey,eight from the HES, and four comparison stars. We discovered two new r-II stars, CS 29497-004 ([Eu/Fe]=1.64± 0.22) and CS 29491-069([Eu/Fe]=1.08± 0.23). A first abundance analysis of CS 29497-004 yields that its abundances of Ba to Dy are on average enhanced by 1.5 dex with respect to iron and the Sun and match a scaled solar r-process pattern well, while Th is underabundant relative to that pattern by 0.3dex, which we attribute to radioactive decay. That is, CS 29497-004 seems not to belong to the class of r-process enhanced stars displaying an ``actinide boost'', like CS 31082-001 (Hill et al. 2002), or CS30306-132 (Honda et al. 2004b). The abundance pattern agrees well with predictions of the phenomenological model of Qian & Wasserburg.Based in large part on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, Paranal, Chile (proposal number 68.B-0320).