The HST/ACS Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters: Luminosity Functions

Paust, Nathaniel; Reid, I.; King, I.; Aparicio, A.; Piotto, G.
Bibliographical reference

2007 AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, American Astronomical Society Meeting 209, #100.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.1044

Advertised on:
12
2006
Number of authors
5
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Using data collected as part of the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) study of Galactic gobular clusters, we present photometry and luminosity functions (LFs) extending several magnitudes below the main sequence turn off for a sample of Galactic globular clusters. These clusters have been selected from the larger ACS survey based on the Trager et al. (1995) catalog of globular cluster surface brightness profiles in order to select two groups of clusters: one with seemingly normal profiles and one with unusual profiles. The LFs have been compared to stellar models from the DSEP code (Chaboyer et al. 2001) using several different statistical methods to determine parameters such as age, distance modulus, and IMF slope. Future work on this project will result in a large homogenous sample of LFs and mass functions which will be useful in a wide range of astronomical projects. Support for this work (GO-10775) was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555.