arXivDaily arXiv每日学术速递 周一至周五更新
arXiv 0812.4541astro-ph
收藏

银河系球状星团的ACS巡天。VII。相对年龄

The ACS Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. VII. Relative Ages

Antonio Marin-Franch, Antonio Aparicio, Giampaolo Piotto, Alfred Rosenberg, Brian Chaboyer, Ata Sarajedini, Michael Siegel, Jay Anderson, Luigi R. Bedin, Aaron … 展开作者

Antonio Marin-Franch, Antonio Aparicio, Giampaolo Piotto, Alfred Rosenberg, Brian Chaboyer, Ata Sarajedini, Michael Siegel, Jay Anderson, Luigi R. Bedin, Aaron Dotter, Maren Hempel, Ivan King, Steven Majewski, Antonino P. Milone, Nathaniel Paust, I. Neill Reid

摘要:

ACS银河系球状星团巡天是哈勃太空望远镜(HST)财政部的一项计划,旨在提供一个新的大型,深入和均匀的光度数据库。根据该计划的观测结果,我们通过比较星团主序关闭的相对位置,使用主序拟合来交叉比较样本内的星团,测量了64个银河系球状星团样本的精确相对年龄。该方法提供的相对年龄的形式精度为2- 7%。我们证明,计算的相对年龄是独立的理论模型的选择。我们发现银河系球状星团样本可以分为两组--一组年龄离散度约为5%且没有年龄-金属丰度关系的老星团,和一组年龄-金属丰度关系与人马座矮星系相关的球状星团相似的年轻星团。这些结果与银河系晕形成于两个阶段或过程相一致。第一个可能与晕的快速(<0.8 Gyr)组装过程相一致,在这个过程中形成了老星系团中的星系团。此外,这些星系团可能是在矮星系再电离之前形成的,矮星系后来会合并,形成Lambda-CDM宇宙学预测的银河系晕。然而,这些星系团所显示的银河系中心金属丰度梯度似乎很难与后者相调和。至于较年轻的星团,很容易认为它们的起源与后来被吸积的银河系卫星星系内的形成有关,但年龄-金属丰度关系的起源仍然不清楚。

英文摘要:

The ACS Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters is a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Treasury program designed to provide a new large, deep and homogeneous photometric database. Based on observations from this program, we have measured precise relative ages for a sample of 64 Galactic globular clusters by comparing the relative position of the clusters' main sequence turn offs, using main-sequence fitting to cross-compare clusters within the sample. This method provides relative ages to a formal precision of 2-7%. We demonstrate that the calculated relative ages are independent of the choice of theoretical model. We find that the Galactic globular cluster sample can be divided into two groups -- a population of old clusters with an age dispersion of ~5% and no age-metallicity relation, and a group of younger clusters with an age-metallicity relation similar to that of the globular clusters associated with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. These results are consistent with the Milky Way halo having formed in two phases or processes. The first one would be compatible with a rapid (<0.8 Gyr) assembling process of the halo, in which the clusters in the old group were formed. Also these clusters could have been formed before reionization in dwarf galaxies that would later merge to build the Milky Way halo as predicted by Lambda-CDM cosmology. However, the galactocentric metallicity gradient shown by these clusters seems difficult to reconcile with the latter. As for the younger clusters, it is very tempting to argue that their origin is related to their formation within Milky Way satellite galaxies that were later accreted, but the origin of the age-metallicity relation remains unclear.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

↑