BD+44°493: Chemo-dynamical Analysis and Constraints on Companion Planetary Masses from WIYN/NEID Spectroscopy*

Abstract In this work, we present high-resolution ( R ∼ 100,000), high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N ∼ 800) spectroscopic observations for the well-known, bright, extremely metal-poor, carbon-enhanced star BD+44°493 . We determined chemical abundances and upper limits for 17 elements from WIYN/NEID data, complemented with 11 abundances redetermined from Subaru and Hubble data, using the new, more accurate, stellar atmospheric parameters calculated in this work. Our analysis suggests that BD+44°493 is a low-mass (0.83 M ⊙ ), old (12.1–13.2 Gyr) second-generation star likely formed from a gas cloud enriched by a single metal-free 20.5 M ⊙ Population III star in the early Universe. With a disk-like orbit, BD+44°493 does not appear to be associated with any major merger event in the early history of the Milky Way. From the precision radial-velocity NEID measurements (median absolute deviation = 16 m s −1 ), we were able to constrain companion planetary masses around BD+44°493 and rule out the presence of planets as small as <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi>m</mml:mi> <mml:mi>sin</mml:mi> <mml:mi>i</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:math> M J out to periods of 100 days. This study opens a new avenue of exploration for the intersection between stellar archaeology and exoplanet science using NEID.