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arXiv 0801.1111astro-ph
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用HST/ACS精确测定NGC121星团的年龄

An Accurate Age Determination for the SMC Star Cluster NGC121 with HST/ACS

K. Glatt, J. S. Gallagher, E. K. Grebel, A. Nota, E. Sabbi, M. Sirianni, G. Clementini, M. Tosi, D. Harbeck, A. Koch, M. Cracraft

摘要:

作为致力于研究小麦哲伦星云中星团和场中的旧恒星星族的系列论文的第一篇,我们提出了用哈勃太空望远镜上的高级巡天照相机在F555 W和F814 W滤波器中对NGC 121的深度观测。由此产生的颜色星等图达到主序关闭以下约3.5等,比以前的任何数据都要深。我们采用绝对和相对年龄法对NGC 121进行了年龄测定。将ACS测光系统中的等时线与NGC 121观测到的山脊线拟合,得出年龄为11.8 +- 0.5 Gyr(Teramo),11.2 +- 0.5 Gyr(Padova)和10.5 +- 0.5 Gyr(Dartmouth)。星系团脊线最接近阿尔法增强达特茅斯等时线。将我们的相对年龄放在绝对年龄尺度上,我们发现年龄分别为10.9 +- 0.5 Gyr(从主序关闭和水平分支之间的震级差异)和11.5 +- 0.5 Gyr(从水平分支的绝对震级)。这五个不同的年龄测定都低于2 - 3 Gyr的年龄最古老的银河系球状星团可比的金属丰度。因此,我们证实了早期的发现,最古老的球状星团在小麦哲伦云,NGC 121,是几个陀螺年轻比它最古老的同行在银河系和其他附近的矮星系,如大麦云,天炉座,人马座。如果它被吸积到银河系的晕中,NGC 121将类似于“年轻的晕球状星团”,尽管它没有与人马座矮星相关的最年轻的球状星团年轻。NGC 121的年轻年龄可能是由于小麦哲伦星云中团簇形成的延迟,或者是由于最初少数星团中只有一个随机存活的结果。

英文摘要:

As first Paper of a series devoted to study the old stellar population in clusters and fields in the Small Magellanic Cloud, we present deep observations of NGC121 in the F555W and F814W filters, obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope. The resulting color-magnitude diagram reaches ~3.5 mag below the main-sequence turn-off; deeper than any previous data. We derive the age of NGC121 using both absolute and relative age-dating methods. Fitting isochrones in the ACS photometric system to the observed ridge line of NGC121, gives ages of 11.8 +- 0.5 Gyr (Teramo), 11.2 +- 0.5 Gyr (Padova) and 10.5 +- 0.5 Gyr (Dartmouth). The cluster ridge line is best approximated by the alpha-enhanced Dartmouth isochrones. Placing our relative ages on an absolute age scale, we find ages of 10.9 +- 0.5 Gyr (from the magnitude difference between the main-sequence turn-off and the horizontal branch) and 11.5 +- 0.5 Gyr (from the absolute magnitude of the horizontal branch), respectively. These five different age determinations are all lower by 2 - 3 Gyr than the ages of the oldest Galactic globular clusters of comparable metallicity. Therefore we confirm the earlier finding that the oldest globular cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud, NGC121, is a few Gyr younger than its oldest counterparts in the Milky Way and in other nearby dwarf galaxies such as the Large Magellanic Cloud, Fornax, and Sagittarius. If it were accreted into the Galactic halo, NGC121 would resemble the ''young halo globulars'', although it is not as young as the youngest globular clusters associated with the Sagittarius dwarf. The young age of NGC121 could result from delayed cluster formation in the Small Magellanic Cloud or result from the random survival of only one example of an initially small number star clusters.

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