Abstract
Recently, slowly cooling white dwarfs (WDs) are a new class of WD that have been identified in two globular clusters (namely M13 and NGC 6752), showing a horizontal branch (HB) morphology ...with an extended blue tail. The cooling rate of these WDs is reduced by stable thermonuclear hydrogen burning in their residual envelope, and they are thought to originate by stars that populate the blue tail of the HB and then skip the asymptotic giant branch phase. Consistently, no evidence of such kind of WDs has been found in M3, a similar cluster with no blue extension of the HB. To further explore this phenomenon, we took advantage of deep photometric data acquired with the Hubble Space Telescope in the near-ultraviolet and investigated the bright portion of the WD cooling sequence in M5, another Galactic globular cluster with HB morphology similar to M3. The normalized WD luminosity function derived in M5 was found to be impressively similar to that observed in M3, in agreement with the fact that the stellar mass distribution along the HB of these two systems is almost identical. The comparison with theoretical predictions is consistent with the fact that the cooling sequence in this cluster is populated by canonical (fast cooling) WDs. Thus, the results presented in this paper provide further support to the scenario proposing a direct causal connection between the slow cooling WD phenomenon and the horizontal branch morphology of the host stellar cluster.
Abstract
We present a photometric analysis of globular cluster 47 Tuc (NGC 104) using near-IR imaging data from the GeMS/GSAOI Galactic Globular Cluster Survey (G4CS), which is in operation at ...Gemini-South telescope. Our survey is designed to obtain AO-assisted deep imaging with near diffraction-limited spatial resolution of the central fields of Milky Way globular clusters. The G4CS near-IR photometry was combined with an optical photometry catalog that was obtained from Hubble Space Telescope survey data to produce a high-quality color–magnitude diagram that reaches down to
K
s
≈ 21 Vega mag. We used the software suite BASE-9, which uses an adaptive Metropolis sampling algorithm to perform a Markov chain Monte Carlo Bayesian analysis, and obtained probability distributions and precise estimates for the age, distance, and extinction cluster parameters. Our best estimate for the age of 47 Tuc is
12.42
−
0.05
+
0.05
± 0.08 Gyr and our true distance modulus estimate is (
m
−
M
)
0
= 13.250
−
0.003
+
0.003
± 0.028 mag, which are in tight agreement with previous studies using Gaia DR2 parallax and detached eclipsing binaries.
Abstract
Our understanding of the kinematic properties of multiple stellar populations (mPOPs) in Galactic globular clusters (GCs) is still limited compared to what we know about their chemical and ...photometric characteristics. Such limitation arises from the lack of a comprehensive observational investigation of this topic. Here we present the first homogeneous kinematic analysis of mPOPs in 56 GCs based on high-precision proper motions computed with Hubble Space Telescope data. We focused on red-giant-branch stars, for which the mPOP tagging is clearer, and measured the velocity dispersion of stars belonging to first (1G) and second generations (2G). We find that 1G stars are generally kinematically isotropic even at the half-light radius, whereas 2G stars are isotropic at the center and become radially anisotropic before the half-light radius. The radial anisotropy is induced by a lower tangential velocity dispersion of 2G stars with respect to the 1G population, while the radial component of the motion is comparable. We also show possible evidence that the kinematic properties of mPOPs are affected by the Galactic tidal field, corroborating previous observational and theoretical results suggesting a relation between the strength of the external tidal field and some properties of mPOPs. Although limited to the GCs’ central regions, our analysis leads to new insights into the mPOP phenomenon, and provides the motivation for future observational studies of the internal kinematics of mPOPs.
We use 14 orbits of Advanced Camera for Surveys observations to reach the end of the white dwarf cooling sequence in the globular cluster M4. Our photometry and completeness tests show that the end ...is located at magnitude m F606W = 28.5 - 0.1, which implies an age of 11.6 - 0.6 Gyr (internal errors only). This is consistent with the age from fits to the main-sequence turnoff (12.0 - 1.4 Gyr).
We have performed the first detailed simulation of the horizontal branch (HB) of the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy by means of synthetic modelling techniques, taking consistently into account the ...star formation history and metallicity evolution as determined from the main sequence and red giant branch spectroscopic observations. The only free parameter in the whole analysis is the integrated mass loss of red giant branch stars. This is the first time that synthetic HB models, consistent with the complex star formation history of a galaxy, are calculated and matched to the observed HB. We find that the metallicity range covered by the star formation history, as constrained by the red giant branch spectroscopy, plus a simple mass loss law, enable us to cover both the full magnitude and colour range of HB stars. In addition, the number count distribution along the observed HB can be also reproduced provided that the red giant branch mass loss is mildly metallicity dependent, with a very small dispersion at fixed metallicity. The magnitude, metallicity and period distribution of the RR Lyrae stars are also well reproduced. There is no excess of bright objects that require enhanced-He models. The lack of signatures of enhanced-He stars along the HB is consistent with the lack of the O-Na anticorrelation observed in Sculptor and other dwarf galaxies, and confirms the intrinsic difference between Local Group dwarf galaxies and globular cluster populations. We also compare the brightness of the observed red giant branch bump with the synthetic counterpart, and find a discrepancy. The theoretical bump is brighter than the observed one, which is similar to what is observed in Galactic globular clusters.
The calculation of the thermal stratification in the superadiabatic layers of stellar models with convective envelopes is a long-standing problem of stellar astrophysics, and has a major impact on ...predicted observational properties such as radius and effective temperature. The mixing length theory, almost universally used to model the superadiabatic convective layers, contains one free parameter to be calibrated (αml) whose value controls the resulting effective temperature. Here we present the first self-consistent stellar evolution models calculated by employing the atmospheric temperature stratification, Rosseland opacities, and calibrated variable αml (dependent on effective temperature and surface gravity) from a recently published large suite of three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulations of stellar convective envelopes and atmospheres for solar stellar composition. From our calculations (with the same composition of the radiation hydrodynamics simulations), we find that the effective temperatures of models with the hydro-calibrated variable αml (that ranges between ~1.6 and ~2.0 in the parameter space covered by the simulations) present only minor differences, by at most ~30–50 K, compared to models calculated at constant solar αml (equal to 1.76, as obtained from the same simulations). The depth of the convective regions is essentially the same in both cases. We also analyzed the role played by the hydro-calibrated T(τ) relationships in determining the evolution of the model effective temperatures, when compared to alternative T(τ) relationships often used in stellar model computations. The choice of the T(τ) can have a larger impact than the use of a variable αml compared to a constant solar value. We found that the solar semi-empirical T(τ) by Vernazza et al. (1981, ApJS, 45, 635) provides stellar model effective temperatures that agree quite well with the results with the hydro-calibrated relationships.
We present far ultraviolet (FUV) observations of globular cluster NGC 4147 using three FUV filters, BaF
2
(F154W), sapphire (F169M), and silica (F172M) of Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) ...on-board the AstroSat satellite. We confirmed the cluster membership of the UVIT observed sources using proper motions from Gaia data release 2 (GAIA DR2). We identified 37 blue horizontal branch stars (BHBs), one blue straggler star (BSS) and 15 variable stars using UV-optical color magnitude diagrams (CMDs). We find that all the FUV bright BHBs are second generation population stars. Using UV-optical CMDs, we identify two sub-populations, BHB1 and BHB2, among the UV-bright BHBs in the cluster with stars count ratio of 24:13 for BHB1 and BHB2. The effective temperatures (
T
eff
) of BHB1 and BHB2 were derived using color-temperature relation of BaSTI-IAC zero-age horizontal branch (ZAHB). We found that BHB1 stars are more centrally concentrated than BHB2 stars. We also derive physical parameters of the detected FUV bright BSS by fitting younger age BaSTI-IAC isochrones on optical and UV-optical CMDs.
Red Giant Branch Stars: The Theoretical Framework Salaris, Maurizio; Cassisi, Santi; Weiss, Achim
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
04/2002, Letnik:
114, Številka:
794
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Theoretical predictions of red giant branch stars’ effective temperatures, colors, luminosities, and surface chemical abundances are a necessary tool for the astrophysical interpretation of the ...visible–near‐infrared integrated light from unresolved stellar populations, the color‐magnitude diagrams of resolved stellar clusters and galaxies, and spectroscopic determinations of red giant chemical abundances. On the other hand, the comparison with empirical constraints provides a stringent test for the accuracy of present generations of red giant models.
We review the current status of red giant star modeling, discussing in detail the still‐existing uncertainties affecting the model input physics (e.g., electron conduction opacity, treatment of the superadiabatic convection) and the adequacy of the physical assumptions built into the model computations.
We compare theory with several observational features of the red giant branch in Galactic globular clusters, such as the luminosity function “bump,” the luminosity of the red giant branch tip, and the envelope chemical abundance patterns, to show the level of agreement between current stellar models and empirical data concerning the stellar luminosities, star counts, and surface chemical abundances.
The age measurement of the stellar halo component of the Galaxy is based mainly on the comparison of the main sequence turn-off luminosity of the globular cluster (GC) stars with theoretical ...isochrones. The standard procedure includes a vertical shift, in order to account for the distance and extinction to the cluster, and a horizontal one, to compensate the reddening. However, the photometry is typically performed with broad-band filters where the shape of the stellar spectra introduces a shift of the effective wavelength response of the system, dependent on the effective temperature (or color index) of the star. The result is an increasing distortion—actually a rotation and a progressive compression with the temperature—of the color-magnitude diagrams relatively to the standard unreddened isochrones, with increasing reddening. This effect is usually negligible for reddening E ( B - V ) on the order of or smaller than 0.15, but it can be quite relevant at larger extinction values. While the ratio of the absorption to the reddening is widely discussed in the literature, the importance of the latter effect is often overlooked. In this contribution, we present isochron simulations and discuss the expected effects on age dating of high-reddening globular clusters.
We obtain stringent constraints on the actual efficiency of mass loss for red giant branch stars in the Galactic globular cluster 47 Tuc, by comparing synthetic modelling based on stellar evolution ...tracks with the observed distribution of stars along the horizontal branch in the colour-magnitude-diagram. We confirm that the observed, wedge-shaped distribution of the horizontal branch can only be reproduced by accounting for a range of initial He abundances, in agreement with inferences from the analysis of the main sequence, and a red giant branch mass loss with a small dispersion. We carefully investigated several possible sources of uncertainty that could affect the results of the horizontal branch modelling, stemming from uncertainties in both stellar model computations and cluster properties, such as heavy element abundances, reddening, and age. We determine a firm lower limit of ~0.17M⊙ for the mass lost by red giant branch stars, corresponding to horizontal branch stellar masses between ~0.65M⊙ and ~0.73M⊙ (the range driven by the range of initial helium abundances). We also derive that in this cluster the amount of mass lost along the asymptotic giant branch stars is comparable to the mass lost during the previous red giant branch phase. These results confirm, for this cluster, the disagreement between colour-magnitude-diagram analyses and inferences from recent studies of the dynamics of the cluster stars, which predict a much less efficient red giant branch mass loss. A comparison between the results from these two techniques applied to other clusters is required to gain more insights about the origin of this disagreement.
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