Published in

American Astronomical Society, Astronomical Journal, 2(127), p. 868-874, 2004

DOI: 10.1086/380930

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

RR Lyrae Stars in M32: Signatures of an Ancient Population

Journal article published in 2004 by Javier Alonso-García ORCID, Mario Mateo, and Guy Worthey
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We report the discovery of variable stars in the dwarf elliptical galaxy M32 using a series of images obtained with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on the Hubble Space Telescope. The colors, luminosities, and approximate periods of the majority of these stars indicate that they are RR Lyrae stars. Comparisons with the number of such stars identified in a nearby control field reveals that the majority of these variable stars are M32 members and not contaminants from the bulge, halo, or thick disk of the Andromeda Galaxy, M31. This discovery of RR Lyrae stars in M32 provides strong evidence of the presence of an "ancient" stellar population in this enigmatic galaxy. Although it is not possible with our data to provide a precise age estimate of the population from which the M32 RR Lyrae stars arise, we argue that these stars almost certainly represent a component that is older than 10 Gyr. Due to the sensitivity of the horizontal branch—and therefore the population of the instability strip—to age and metallicity among other parameters, we roughly estimate that this old and metal-poor component represents at least 2.3% of the total stellar population of M32.