A catalog of field horizontal branch stars aligned with high-velocity clouds

We present a catalog of 430 field horizontal branch (FHB) stars, selected from the Hamburg/ESO Survey (HES), which fortuitously align with high column density neutral hydrogen (H i) high-velocity cloud (HVC) gas. These stars are ideal candidates for absorption-line studies of HVCs, attempts at which have been made for almost 40 years with little success. A parent sample of 8321 HES FHB stars was used to extract H i spectra along each line of sight, using the H i Parkes All-Sky Survey. All lines of sight aligned with high-velocity H i emission with peak brightness temperatures greater than 120 mK were examined. The H i spectra of these 430 probes were visually screened and cross-referenced with several HVC catalogs. In a forthcoming paper, we report on the results of high-resolution spectroscopic observations of a sample of stars drawn from this catalog.