Probing Mass Segregation in NGC 6397
Abstract
In this study, we present a detailed study of mass segregation in the globular clister NGC 6397. First, we carry out a photometric analysis of projected ESO-VLT data (between 1 and 10 arcmin from the cluster centre), presenting the luminosity function corrected by completeness. The luminosity function shows a higher density of bright stars near the central region of the data, with respect to the outer region. We calculate a deprojected model (covering the whole cluster) estimating a total number of stars of 193000 +- 19000. The shapes of the surface brightness and density-number profiles versus the radial coordinate r (instead of the projected coordinate R) lead to a decreasing luminosity for an average star, and thus of mass, up to 1 arcmin, quantifying the mass segregation. The deprojected model does not show evidence of mass segregation outside this region.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1411.6327,
title = {Probing Mass Segregation in NGC 6397},
author = {E. Martinazzi and A. Pieres and S. O. Kepler and J. E. S. Costa and C. Bonatto and E. Bica},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1411.6327},
year = {2014}
}