Bibcode
Battaglia, G.; Irwin, M.; Tolstoy, E.; Hill, V.; Helmi, A.; Letarte, B.; Jablonka, P.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 383, Issue 1, pp. 183-199.
Advertised on:
1
2008
Citations
177
Refereed citations
154
Description
We demonstrate that low-resolution CaII triplet (CaT) spectroscopic
estimates of the overall metallicity ([Fe/H]) of individual red giant
branch (RGB) stars in two nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) agree
to +/-0.1-0.2 dex with detailed high-resolution spectroscopic
determinations for the same stars over the range -2.5 < [Fe/H] <
-0.5. For this study, we used a sample of 129 stars observed in low- and
high-resolution modes with VLT/FLAMES in the Sculptor and Fornax dSphs.
We also present the data-reduction steps we used in our low-resolution
analysis and show that the typical accuracy of our velocity and CaT
[Fe/H] measurement is ~2 km s-1 and 0.1 dex, respectively. We
conclude that CaT-[Fe/H] relations calibrated on globular clusters can
be applied with confidence to RGB stars in composite stellar populations
over the range -2.5 < [Fe/H] < -0.5.