Program: GN-2022B-Q-312

We propose to observe around 100 nearby old/metal-poor Galactic halo stars over 40 hours of Gemii Queue observing using `Alopeke and Zorro on both of the Gemini 8m telescopes with the goal of searching for close companions around these stars. Currently, the binary distribution of halo stars is not well understood due to the rarity of nearby, easily observable stars. However, with the advent of the Gaia data releases, large numbers of nearby halo stars are being identified. Recent work has also indicated that compared with metal-rich solar-type disk stars, the binary distribution for metal-poor stars should be skewed to closer separations. These observations will be add to the binary statistics of halo stars and provide more understanding of the shape of the binary distribution. Our sample of halo stars is drawn from a publicly available catalog created using Gaia eDR3 and comprises all halo stars within 100 pc and with V magnitudes brighter than 18. More importantly, our study will include low-mass halo stars which have thus far been largely ignored in previous halo multiplicity surveys.