THE RED HORIZONTAL-BRANCH STAR HD-17072

We summarize the results of a spectroscopic analysis of HD 17072, find ing it to be a metal-poor ([Fe/H] = - 1.17) red horizontal-branch star with T-eff = 5375 K and log g = 2.4. We also derive a radial velocity of 62.8 km s(-1). It has the best determined Hipparcos trigonometric parallax among the metal-poor field horizontal-branch stars and suppor ts the fainter luminosities for such stars found from statistical para llax and Baade-Wesselink analyses, in contradiction to the results of main-sequence fitting of metal-poor field dwarfs to globular cluster m ain sequences.