UVES Abundances of Stars in Nearby Galaxies: How Good are Theoretical Isochrones?

Abstract

Here we report some results from an ESO-VLT programme to observe individual stars in nearby dwarf galaxies at high resolution with the UVES spectrograph (Tolstoy, Venn, Shetrone, Primas, Hill, Kaufer & Szeifert 2002, submitted to AJ). We mainly concentrate on illustrating the issues and uncertainties surrounding our efforts to determine the ages of stars for which we have accurately measured [Fe/H] and [alpha/Fe].Comment: 2 page contribution to conference "New Horizons in Globular Cluster Astronomy", Padua, June 2002 ed. G. Piotto, G. Meylan, G. Djorgovski, & M. Riello, ASP Conf. Ser. (2002