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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(559), p. L17-L20, 2001

DOI: 10.1086/323723

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The 2MASS Color-Magnitude Diagram of the Center of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy: Photometric Measurements of a Surprisingly High Mean Metallicity

Journal article published in 2001 by Andrew A. Cole ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

We present the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) (J-K, K) color-magnitude diagram for the region within 1 degree of the center of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Using the slope of the red giant branch (RGB), we determine a mean metallicity for the main stellar population of [Fe/H] = -0.5 +/-0.2. The Sagittarius RGB possesses a blue tail that overlaps with the foreground Milky Way giant branch, and suggests that approximately 1/3 of the RGB is more metal-poor than [Fe/H] = -1. Direct comparison to the Large Magellanic Cloud confirms the metal-rich nature of the bulk of the Sagittarius population. Our result is marginally consistent with the even higher metallicities determined from high-resolution spectroscopy. ; Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted by ApJ Letters, uses emulateapj.sty