The Barium Odd Isotope Fractions in Seven Ba Stars

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting and informative paper that improves our understanding of galactic nucleosynthesis.  The paper is generally of high quality, but some improvements are possible, based on these comments:

Major comments:

Line 104, when mentioning that the NLTE effects have been considered, more information is needed.  Specifically how the level populations and source functions are calculated, and how large are the level population departures compared to LTE, and similarly for the Barium lines.  The magnitude of the NLTE effect on abundance for Fe lines should perhaps be added to Table 3.

In Figure 2, error bars are needed on the points, in both X- and Y-coordinates

In Figure 4, several of the best-fit chi-squared values are less than one.  That should never happen in a correct analysis, and it implies that something is wrong (e.g., over-fitting).  I think it's necessary to investigate this point and determine and correct (or at least discuss) what is causing the unrealistically low values of chi-squared.

Minor comments:

in the Abstract, "of over than 100%"  >> of over 100%

line 99, basic datum >> basic data

The magnitude of the abundance differences on Figure 1 are difficult to see, and the symbols are too small to see them clearly.  It would be helpful to expand the scale of the Y-axis so that less empty space is present on the Figure.

lines 146 and 147, nucleus >> nucleii  (the plural noun is needed when two are discussed)

line 194 and the caption of Figure 5,  presented out >> presented

line 196, we can found >> we found

line 283, "in the solar"  >> do you mean "in the Sun", or "in the Solar System"? or perhaps "in solar abundance ratios"?

In Section 6, when you say "should be" (line 335) and "should" (line 337) the sense of those statements in English is that your conclusions are expected to be true.  Those are very weak statements, and I think you mean to conclude more positively.  So I suggest not using the word "should", and instead say "likely to".  For example, "HD218356 is likely to be a more evolved extrinsic Ba star..."  (And consider similar clarifications for other usages of "should".)

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper offers an interesting analysis of a group of stars showing up s-process enrichment, in the attempt of disentangling the contributions of the s- and r-process.

An interesting interpretation of the results is also offered to the reader. I am favorable to the publication of the manuscript, after the points below are addressed.

 

 

1) I recommend that the authors add a short discussion in section 3, on how much the estimated mass of the stars is sensitive to the set of isochrone adopted

 

2) At the end of section 3, please add the main source of uncertainty for the determination of the quantities Teff, gravity, metallicity and micro-turbulence.

 

3) 5th line of section 4: "the average of two above two lines" must be changed in "the average of the two lines above"

 

4) I would repeat the introduction of f at the beginning of section 4.2, not to oblige the reader to go back to the introduction

 

5) Please add a reference for the last sentence of page 4 (which ends in page 5)

 

6) lines 4 of page 6. I do not understand the meaning of "with above"

 

7) section 5.3. "which is based its..." --> "which is based on its..."

 

8) Bottom of page 6, the sentence starting with "This means that there ..". Use the neither... not.. structure for this sentence

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf