English

Photometric Metallicities in Bootes I

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2014-03-05 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

We present new Stromgren and Washington data sets for the Bootes I dwarf galaxy, and combine them with the available SDSS photometry. The goal of this project is to refine a ground-based, practical, accurate method to determine age and metallicity for individual stars in Bootes I that can be selected in an unbiased imaging survey, without having to take spectra. We produce photometric metallicities from Stromgren and Washington photometry, for stellar systems with a range of 1.0>[Fe/H]>3.5-1.0>[Fe/H]>-3.5. To avoid the decrease in sensitivity of the Stromgren metallicity index on the lower red-giant branch, we replace the Stromgren v-filter with the broader Washington C-filter; we find that CT1byCT_1by is the most successful filter combination, for individual stars with [Fe/H]<2.0[Fe/H]<-2.0, to maintain ~0.2 dex [Fe/H][Fe/H]-resolution over the whole red-giant branch. We demonstrate that we can break the isochrones' age-metallicity degeneracy with these filters, using stars with log g=2.5-3.0, which have less than a 2% change in their (CT1)(C-T_1)-colour due to age, over a range of 11-14 Gyr.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1401.3389,
  title  = {Photometric Metallicities in Bootes I},
  author = {J. Hughes and G. Wallerstein and A. Dotter and D. Geisler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.3389},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

24 pages, 18 figures, accepted by MNRAS

R2 v1 2026-06-22T02:45:35.373Z