44 research outputs found
The Mass-to-Light Ratios of the Draco and Ursa Minor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies. II. The Binary Population and Its Effect in the Measured Velocity Dispersions of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies
We use a large set of radial velocities in the Ursa Minor and Draco dwarf
spheroidal galaxies to search for binary stars and to infer the binary
frequency. Of the 118 stars in our sample with multiple observations, six are
velocity variables with probabilities below 0.001. We use Monte Carlo
simulations that mimic our observations to determine the efficiency with which
our observations find binary stars. Our best, though significantly uncertain,
estimate of the binary frequency for stars near the turnoff in Draco and UMi is
0.2--0.3 per decade of period in the vicinity of periods of one year, which is
3--5 that found for the solar neighborhood. This frequency is high
enough that binary stars might significantly affect the measured velocity
dispersions of some dwarf spheroidal galaxies according to some previous
numerical experiments. However, in the course of performing our own
experiments, we discovered that this previous work had inadvertently
overestimated binary orbital velocities. Our first set of simulations of the
effects of binaries is based on the observed scatter in the individual velocity
measurements for the multiply-observed Draco and Ursa Minor stars. This scatter
is small compared to measured velocity dispersions and, so, the effect of
binaries on the dispersions is slight. This result is supported by our second
set of experiments, which are based on a model binary population normalized by
the observed binary frequency in Draco and Ursa Minor. We conclude that binary
stars have had no significant effect on the measured velocity dispersion and
inferred mass-to-light ratio of any dwarf spheroidal galaxy.Comment: 33 pages, 95kb uuencoded, gzipped postscript; Accepted by
Astronomical Journal; gzipped, tarred postscript of text, tables, figures
available at ftp://as.arizona.edu/pub/edo (binaries_in_dsph.tar.gz
The Dwarf Spheroidal Companions to M31: WFPC2 Observations of Andromeda I
Images have been obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 camera of
Andromeda I, a dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy that lies in the outer halo of
M31. The resulting color-magnitude diagrams reveal for the first time the
morphology of the horizontal branch in this system. We find that, in a similar
fashion to many of the galactic dSph companions, the horizontal branch (HB) of
And~I is predominantly red. Combined with the metal abundance of this dSph,
this red HB morphology indicates that And I can be classified as a ``second
parameter'' system in the outer halo of M31. This result then supports the
hypothesis that the outer halo of M31 formed in the same extended chaotic
manner as is postulated for the outer halo of the Galaxy.Comment: 26 pages using aas2pp4.sty, including 2 tables and 7 figures, to be
published in AJ. Figure 1 is in gif form. To include in main ps file, use xv
to create a ps file called Da_Costa.fig1.ps and uncomment appropriate lines
in .tex fil
A Survey for Low-Surface-Brightness Galaxies Around M31. I. The Newly Discovered Dwarf Andromeda V
We present images and a color-magnitude diagram for And V, a new dwarf
spheroidal companion to M31 that was found using a digital filtering technique
applied to 1550 square degrees of the second Palomar Sky Survey. And V resolves
into stars easily in follow-up 4-m V- and I-band images, from which we deduce a
distance of 810 +/- 45 kpc using the tip of the red giant branch method. Within
the uncertainties, this distance is identical to the Population II distances
for M31 and, combined with a projected separation of 112 kpc, provides strong
support for a physical association between the two galaxies. There is no
emission from And V detected in H alpha, 1.4 GHz radio continuum, or IRAS
bandpasses, and there is no young population seen in the color-magnitude
diagram that might suggest that And V is an irregular. Thus, the classification
as a new dwarf spheroidal member of the Local Group seems secure. With an
extinction-corrected central surface brightness of 25.2 V mag per square
arcsec, a mean metal abundance of [Fe/H] approximately -1.5, and no evidence
for upper AGB stars, And V resembles And I & III.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal, November 1998
issue; 4 embedded PostScript figures, 4 JPEG figures; see
http://aloe.tuc.noao.edu/jacoby/dwarfs.html for a complete full-resolution
PostScript versio
The Dwarf Spheroidal Companions to M31: WFPC2 Observations of Andromeda III
The Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 camera has been used to image Andromeda III,
a dwarf spheroidal companion (dSph) to M31. The resulting color-magnitude (c-m)
diagrams reveal the morphology of the horizontal branch (HB) in this dwarf
galaxy. We find that like Andromeda I and Andromeda II, and like most of the
Galactic dSph companions, the HB morphology of And III is predominantly red,
redder than that of both And I and And II despite And III having a lower mean
metallicity. We interpret this red HB morphology as indicating that the bulk of
the And III population is ~3 Gyr younger than the age of the majority of
Galactic globular clusters. Nevertheless, the And III c-m diagram does reveal a
few blue HB stars, and a number of RR Lyrae variables are also evident in the
data. This indicates that And III does contain an `old' population of age
comparable to that of the Galactic globular clusters. There is no evidence,
however, for any young stars in And III despite a claimed association between
this dSph and an HI cloud. As was the case for And II, but not And I, no radial
gradient was detected in the And III HB morphology. And III is ~75 kpc from the
center of M31, comparable to the Galactocentric distances of Sculptor and
Draco. Comparison with standard globular cluster red giant branches indicates
= -1.88 +/-0.11, consistent with the absolute-magnitude - mean
abundance relation followed by dSph galaxies. The same comparison yields an
intrinsic abundance dispersion of sigma([Fe/H]) = 0.12, a low value compared to
the Galactic dSphs of comparable luminosity to And III. The list of candidate
variables reveals one definite and one probable Anomalous Cepheid variables.Comment: 30 pages including 1 table, 10 figures, Fig 1 as jpeg to save space.
Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal, July 2002 issu