Bibcode
DOI
Aparicio, A.; Gallart, C.; Chiosi, C.; Bertelli, G.
Bibliographical reference
Astrophysical Journal Letters v.469, p.L97
Advertised on:
10
1996
Citations
46
Refereed citations
33
Description
In this Letter, we discuss a method to conduct a quantitative study of
the star formation history (SFH) of Local Group (LG) galaxies using
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data. This method has proved to be
successful in the analysis of the SFH of the same kind of galaxies using
ground-based observations. It is based on the comparison of observed
CMDs with a set of model CMDs. The latter are computed assuming
different evolutionary scenarios and include a detailed simulation of
observational effects. CMDs obtained with HST are ~3 mag deeper than
typical CMDs obtained from ground-based telescopes, allowing the
observation, for all LG galaxies, of a part of the CMD that up till now
had remained accessible only for the very nearest galaxies. A very
important feature that will become accessible with HST is the horizontal
branch plus the red clump. The distribution of stars along this
structure is quite sensitive to age and metallicity and should provide a
very important improvement in the time resolution of the SFH for stars
older than ~=2--3 Gyr. We show and discuss four model CMDs that would be
comparable with CMDs from deep HST observations. These model CMDs
represent the following evolutionary scenarios corresponding to a wide
range of dwarf galaxy subtypes from dI to dE: case A, a constant SFR
from 15 Gyr ago to the present time; case B, same as case A, but with
the SFR stopped 0.5 Gyr ago; case C, a constant SFR in the age range
10--9 Gyr; and case D, same as case C but in the age range 15--12 Gyr.
In all four cases a range of metallicity from Z = 0.0001 to Z = 0.004
has been assumed. The present analysis is just a first qualitative
approach to what one may expect to find in the CMDs of LG galaxies.
However, a complete set of model CMDs must be computed to analyze the
data for each galaxy, using the crowding effects derived for that
particular galaxy.