Bibcode
Cole, Andrew A.; Gallart, Carme; Skillman, Evan
Referencia bibliográfica
NOAO Proposal ID #2006B-0142
Fecha de publicación:
8
2006
Número de citas
0
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
We propose to use GMOS-N in MOS mode to obtain metallicities for roughly
100 red giant stars in the nearby (770 kpc) dwarf galaxy LGS 3. We have
obtained deep imaging of LGS 3 with the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced
Camera for Surveys, creating color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) reaching
roughly a magnitude below the oldest main-sequence turnoff with high
degrees of precision and completeness. Dwarf galaxies like LGS 3 are of
particular importance to astronomy because of the possibility to observe
the fossil imprint of cosmological reionization on their early
star-formation histories. Our spectra will break the degeneracy between
age and metallicity that is the single largest source of uncertainty in
the derivation of star-formation history from high-quality CMDs and
allow for the unique and precise determination of both its star-
formation history and chemical evolution. The strength of the near-
infrared calcium triplet near 8600 Awill yield metallicities accurate to
+/-0.2 dex and radial velocities better than 10 km/sec, allowing us to
trace the abundance-kinematic connection and discover if the more
metal-rich stars are dynamically colder than the most metal- poor stars,
as they seem to be in nearby dwarf spheroidals. This will be the first
measurement of the age-metallicity relation in a member of this
enigmatic class of galaxy.