3,425 research outputs found
Photometry of a Galactic field at l = 232, b = -6. The old open cluster Auner 1, the Norma-Cygnus spiral arm and the signature of the warped Galactic Thick Disk
We perform a detailed photometric study of the stellar populations in a
Galactic Field at l = 232, b = -6 in the Canis Major (CMa) constellation. We
present the first U,B,V,I photometry of the old open cluster Auner1 and
determine it to be 3.25 Gyr old and to lie at 8.9 kpc from the Sun. In the
background of the cluster, at more than 9 kpc, we detect a young population
most probably associated to the Norma Cygnus spiral arm. Furthermore, we detect
the signature of an older population and identify its Turn Off and Red Giant
Branch. This population is found to have a mean age of 7 Gyrs and a mean
metallicity of Z = 0.006 . We reconstruct the geometry of the stellar
distribution and argue that this older population - often associated to the
Canis Major {\it galaxy}- belongs in fact to the warped old thin/thick disk
component along this line of sight.Comment: 19 pages, 7 eps figures (some degraded), accepted for publication in
the Astronomical Journa
A deep and wide-field view at the IC 2944 / 2948 complex in Centaurus
We employed the ESO MPI wide-field camera and obtained deep images in the VIc
pass-bands in the region of the IC 2944/2948 complex (l ~ 294; b ~ -1), and
complemented them with literature and archival data. We used this material to
derive the photometric, spectroscopic and kinematic properties of the brightest
(V < 16) stars in the region. The VI deep photometry on the other end, helped
us to unravel the lower main sequence of a few, possibly physical, star groups
in the area.
Our analysis confirmed previous suggestions that the extinction toward this
line of sight follows the normal law (Rv = 3.1). We could recognize B-type
stars spread in distance from a few hundred pc to at least 2 kpc. We found two
young groups (age ~ 3 Myr) located respectively at about 2.3 and 3.2 kpc from
the Sun. They are characterized by a significant variable extinction (E(B-V)
ranging from 0.28 to 0.45 mag), and host a significant pre-main sequence
population. We computed the initial mass functions for these groups and
obtained slopes Gamma from -0.94 to -1.02 (e_Gamma = 0.3), in a scale where the
classical Salpeter law is -1.35. We estimated the total mass of both main
stellar groups in ~ 1100 Mo, respectively. Our kinematic analysis
indicated that both groups of stars deviate from the standard rotation curve of
the Milky Way, in line with literature results for this specific Galactic
direction.
Finally, along the same line of sight we identified a third group of
early-type stars located at ~ 8 kpc from the Sun. This group might be located
in the far side of the Sagittarius-Carina spiral arm.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Metal abundances in extremely distant Galactic old open clusters. II. Berkeley 22 and Berkeley 66
We report on high resolution spectroscopy of four giant stars in the Galactic
old open clusters Berkeley~22 and Berkeley~66 obtained with HIRES at the Keck
telescope. We find that and for
Berkeley~22 and Berkeley~66, respectively. Based on these data, we first revise
the fundamental parameters of the clusters, and then discuss them in the
context of the Galactic disk radial abundance gradient. We found that both
clusters nicely obey the most updated estimate of the slope of the gradient
from \citet{fri02} and are genuine Galactic disk objects.Comment: 20 pages, 6 eps figures, accepted for publication in the Astronomical
Journa
The Magellanic Bridge cluster NGC 796: Deep optical AO imaging reveals the stellar content and initial mass function of a massive open cluster
NGC 796 is a massive young cluster located 59 kpc from us in the diffuse
intergalactic medium of the 1/5-1/10 Magellanic Bridge, allowing to
probe variations in star formation and stellar evolution processes as a
function of metallicity in a resolved fashion, providing a link between
resolved studies of nearby solar-metallicity and unresolved distant metal-poor
clusters located in high-redshift galaxies. In this paper, we present adaptive
optics H imaging of NGC 796 (at 0.5", which is ~0.14 pc at the
cluster distance) along with optical spectroscopy of two bright members to
quantify the cluster properties. Our aim is to explore if star formation and
stellar evolution varies as a function of metallicity by comparing the
properties of NGC 796 to higher metallicity clusters. We find from isochronal
fitting of the cluster main sequence in the colour-magnitude diagram an age of
20 Myr. Based on the cluster luminosity function, we derive a
top-heavy stellar initial mass function (IMF) with a slope =
1.990.2, hinting at an metallicity and/or environmental dependence of the
IMF which may lead to a top-heavy IMF in the early Universe. Study of the
H emission line stars reveals that Classical Be stars constitute a
higher fraction of the total B-type stars when compared with similar clusters
at greater metallicity, providing some support to the chemically homogeneous
theory of stellar evolution. Overall, NGC 796 has a total estimated mass of
990 , and a core radius of 1.40.3 pc which classifies
it as a massive young open cluster, unique in the diffuse interstellar medium
of the Magellanic Bridge.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Contains 14
pages, 11 figures, and 3 table
The Relative Age of the Thin and Thick Galactic Disks
We determine the relative ages of the open cluster NGC 188 and selected
Hipparcos field stars by isochrone fitting, and compare them to the age of the
thick disk globular cluster 47 Tuc. The best fit age for NGC 188 was determined
to be Gyr. The solar metallicity Hipparcos field stars yielded a
slightly older thin disk age, Gyr. Two slightly metal-poor (\feh
= -0.22) field stars whose kinematic and orbital parameters indicate that they
are members of the thin disk were found to have an age of Gyr. The
age for 47 Tuc was determined to be Gyr. All errors are internal
errors due to the uncertainty in the values of metallicity and reddening. Thus,
the oldest stars dated in the thin disk are found to be Gyr
younger than 47 Tuc. Furthermore, as discussed by \citet{Chb99} 47 Tuc has a
similar age to three globular clusters located in the inner part of the
Galactic halo, implying that star formation in the thin disk started within
Gyr of star formation in the halo.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figures, to appear in Ap
Giant Quantum Reflection of Neon Atoms from a Ridged Silicon Surface
The specular reflectivity of slow, metastable neon atoms from a silicon
surface was found to increase markedly when the flat surface was replaced by a
grating structure with parallel narrow ridges. For a surface with ridges that
have a sufficiently narrow top, the reflectivity was found to increase more
than two orders of magnitude at the incident angle of 10 mRad from the surface.
The slope of the reflectivity vs the incident angle near zero was found to be
nearly an order of magnitude smaller than that of a flat surface. A grating
with 6.5% efficiency for the first-order diffraction was fabricated by using
the ridged surface structure.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. To be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jp
Stellar populations in the Carina region: The Galactic plane at l = 291
Previous studies of the Carina region have revealed its complexity and
richness as well as a significant number of early-type stars. In many cases,
these studies only concentrated on the central region or were not homogeneous.
This latter aspect, in particular, is crucial because very different ages and
distances for key clusters have been claimed in recent years. The aim of this
work is to study in detail an area of the Galactic plane in Carina. We analyze
the properties of different stellar populations and focus on a sample of open
clusters and their population of YSOs and highly reddened early stars. We also
studied the stellar mass distribution in these clusters and the possible
scenario of their formation. Finally, we outline the Galactic spiral structure
in this direction. We obtained photometric data for six young open clusters
located in Carina at l = 291, and their adjacent stellar fields, which we
complemented with spectroscopic observations of a few selected targets. We also
culled additional information from the literature. Our results provide more
reliable estimates of distances, color excesses, masses, and ages of the
stellar populations in this direction. We estimate the basic parameters of the
studied clusters and find that they identify two overdensities of young stellar
populations. We find evidence of PMS populations inside them, with an apparent
coeval stellar formation in the most conspicuous clusters. We also discuss
apparent age and distance gradients in the direction NW-SE. We study the mass
distributions of several clusters in the region. They consistently show a
canonical IMF slope. We discover and characterise an abnormally reddened
massive stellar population. Spectroscopic observations of ten stars of this
latter population show that all selected targets were massive OB stars. Their
location is consistent with the position of the Car-Sag spiral arm.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figure
A new, Gaia based, catalogue of blue straggler stars in open clusters
Blue straggler stars are exotic objects present in all stellar environments
whose nature and formation channels are still partially unclear. They seem to
be particularly abundant in open clusters (OCs), thus offering a unique chance
to tackle these problems statistically.We aim to build up a new and homogeneous
catalogue of blue straggler stars (BSS) in Galactic OCs using Gaia to provide a
more solid assessment of the membership of these stars. We also aim to explore
possible relationships of the straggler abundance with the parent cluster's
structural and dynamical parameters. As a by-product, we also search for
possible yellow straggler stars (YSS), which are believed to be stragglers in a
more advanced evolution stage. We employed photometry, proper motions, and
parallaxes extracted from Gaia DR2 for 408 Galactic star clusters and searched
for stragglers within them after performing a careful membership analysis. The
number of BBS emerging from our more stringent, selection criteria turns out to
be significantly smaller than in previous versions of this catalogue. OCs are
therefore not a preferable environment for these kinds of stars anymore. In
addition, we found that BSS start to appear in clusters with ages larger than
log(t) ~ 8.7 and are therefore absent in very young star clusters.The present
catalogue supersedes the previous ones in several ways: membership assessment,
number of stragglers found, and so forth. The new list includes 897 BSS and 77
YSS candidates in 408 OCs. We expect this catalogue to be the basis for a new
round of studies of BSS and YSS.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in A&A Journal on
22/02/202
Ca II TRIPLET SPECTROSCOPY OF SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD RED GIANTS. IV. ABUNDANCES FOR A LARGE SAMPLE OF FIELD STARS AND COMPARISON WITH THE CLUSTER SAMPLE
This paper represents a major step forward in the systematic and homogeneous study of Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) star clusters and field stars carried out by applying the calcium triplet technique. We present in this work the radial velocity and metallicity of approximately 400 red giant stars in 15 SMC fields, with typical errors of about 7 km s-1 and 0.16 dex, respectively. We added to this information our previously determined metallicity values for 29 clusters and approximately 350 field stars using the identical techniques. Using this enlarged sample, we analyze the metallicity distribution and gradient in this galaxy. We also compare the chemical properties of the clusters and of their surrounding fields. We find a number of surprising results. While the clusters, taken as a whole, show no strong evidence for a metallicity gradient (MG), the field stars exhibit a clear negative gradient in the inner region of the SMC, consistent with the recent results of Dobbie et al. For distances to the center of the galaxy less than 4\ub0, field stars show a considerably smaller metallicity dispersion than that of the clusters. However, in the external SMC regions, clusters and field stars exhibit similar metallicity dispersions. Moreover, in the inner region of the SMC, clusters appear to be concentrated in two groups: one more metal-poor and another more metal-rich than field stars. Individually considered, neither cluster group presents an MG. Most surprisingly, the MG for both stellar populations (clusters and field stars) appears to reverse sign in the outer regions of the SMC. The difference between the cluster metallicity and the mean metallicity of the surrounding field stars turns out to be a strong function of the cluster metallicity. These results could be indicating different chemical evolution histories for these two SMC stellar populations. They could also indicate variations in the chemical behavior of the SMC in its internal and external regions
Age Determination of Fifteen Old to Intermediate-Age Small Magellanic Cloud Star Clusters
We present CMDs in the V and I bands for fifteen star clusters in the Small
Magellanic Cloud (SMC) based on data taken with the Very Large Telescope (VLT,
Chile). We selected these clusters from our previous work, wherein we derived
cluster radial velocities and metallicities from Calcium II infrared triplet
(CaT) spectra also taken with the VLT. We discovered that the ages of six of
our clusters have been appreciably underestimated by previous studies, which
used comparatively small telescopes, graphically illustrating the need for
large apertures to obtain reliable ages of old and intermediate-age SMC star
clusters. In particular, three of these clusters, L4, L6 and L110, turn out to
be amongst the oldest SMC clusters known, with ages of 7.9 +- 1.1, 8.7 +- 1.2
and 7.6 +- 1.0 Gyr, respectively, helping to fill a possible "SMC cluster age
gap" (Glatt et al. 2008). Using the present ages and metallicities from Parisi
et al. (2009), we analyze the age distribution, age gradient and age
metallicity relation (AMR) of a sample of SMC clusters measured homogeneously.
There is a suggestion of bimodality in the age distribution but it does not
show a constant slope for the first 4 Gyr (Piatti 2011), and we find no
evidence for an age gradient. Due to the improved ages of our cluster sample,
we find that our AMR is now better represented in the intermediate/old period
than that we derived in Parisi et al. (2009), where we simply took ages
available in the literature. Additionally, clusters younger than aprox. 4 Gyr
now show better agreement with the bursting model, but we confirm that this
model is not a good representation of the AMR during the intermediate-age/old
period. A more complicated model is needed to explain the SMC chemical
evolution in that period.Comment: 76 pages, 32 figures. Accepted for publication in A
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