Bibcode
Marino, A. F.; Milone, A. P.; Piotto, G.; Villanova, S.; Gratton, R.; D'Antona, F.; Anderson, J.; Bedin, L. R.; Bellini, A.; Cassisi, S.; Geisler, D.; Renzini, A.; Zoccali, M.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 731, Issue 1, article id. 64 (2011).
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4
2011
Journal
Citations
143
Refereed citations
122
Description
Omega Centauri is no longer the only globular cluster known to contain
multiple stellar populations, yet it remains the most puzzling. Due to
the extreme way in which the multiple stellar population phenomenon
manifests in this cluster, it has been suggested that it may be the
remnant of a larger stellar system. In this work, we present a
spectroscopic investigation of the stellar populations hosted in the
globular cluster ω Centauri to shed light on its still puzzling
chemical enrichment history. With this aim, we used FLAMES+GIRAFFE@VLT
to observe 300 stars distributed along the multimodal red giant branch
of this cluster, sampling with good statistics the stellar populations
of different metallicities. We determined chemical abundances for Fe,
Na, O, and n-capture elements Ba and La. We confirm that ω
Centauri exhibits large star-to-star variations in iron with [Fe/H]
ranging from ~-2.0 to ~-0.7 dex. Barium and lanthanum abundances of
metal-poor stars are correlated with iron, up to [Fe/H] ~-1.5, while
they are almost constant (or at least have only a moderate increase) in
the more metal-rich populations. There is an extended Na-O
anticorrelation for stars with [Fe/H] lsim-1.3 while more metal-rich
stars are almost all Na-rich. Sodium was found to mildly increase with
iron over the entire metallicity range.
Based on data collected at the European Southern Observatory with the
VLT-UT2, Paranal, Chile.
Related projects
Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
The general aim of the project is to research the structure, evolutionary history and formation of galaxies through the study of their resolved stellar populations, both from photometry and spectroscopy. The group research concentrates in the most nearby objects, namely the Local Group galaxies including the Milky Way and M33 under the hypothesis
Martín
López Corredoira