Abstract
We present a spectroscopic study of eight extremely low-metallicity candidate emission-line galaxies with oxygen abundances possibly below 12 + log O/H = 7.35. These galaxies were selected from data release 10 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey/Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (SDSS/BOSS DR10). We will call these extremely metal-deficient (XMD) galaxies. The electron temperature-sensitive emission line [O iii] λ4363 is detected in three galaxies and marginally detected in two galaxies, allowing for abundance determination by a “direct” method. Because of large uncertainties in the [O iii]λ4363 Å line fluxes, we also calculated oxygen abundance in these galaxies together with the remaining three galaxies using a strong-line semi-empirical method. This method gives oxygen abundances higher than 7.35 for three galaxies with detected [O iii]λ4363 Å line and lower than 7.35 for the remaining five objects of the sample. The newly-discovered galaxies represent excellent targets for follow-up spectroscopic observations with the largest telescopes to improve the oxygen abundance determination and to increase the number of these very rare low-metallicity objects. The extreme location of the most massive and luminous XMD galaxies and XMD candidates in the stellar mass–metallicity diagram implies that these galaxies may be genuine young objects. With stellar masses of up to ~107–108M⊙, the galaxies are not chemically enriched and strongly deviate to lower metallicity as compared to the relation obtained for a large sample of low-redshift, star-forming galaxies.