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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 2(621), p. 777-784, 2005

DOI: 10.1086/427796

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Metallicities on the Double Main Sequence of ω Centauri Imply Large Helium Enhancement

Journal article published in 2005 by Giampaolo Piotto ORCID, Sandro Villanova, Luigi R. Bedin ORCID, Raffaele Gratton ORCID, Santi Cassisi ORCID, Yazan Momany, Alejandra Recio‐Blanco, Sara Lucatello, Jay Anderson, Ivan R. King, Adriano Pietrinferni, Giovanni Carraro
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Having shown in a recent paper that the main sequence of omega Centauri is split into two distinct branches, we now present spectroscopic results showing that the bluer sequence is_less_ metal-poor. We have carefully combined GIRAFFE@VLT spectra of 17 stars on each side of the split into a single spectrum for each branch, with adequate S/N to show clearly that the stars of the blue main sequence are less metal poor by 0.3 dex than those of the dominant red one. From an analysis of the individual spectra, we could not detect any abundance spread among the blue main sequence stars, while the red main sequence stars show a 0.2 dex spread in metallicity. We use stellar-structure models to show that only greatly enhanced helium can explain the color difference between the two main sequences, and we discuss ways in which this enhancement could have arisen.