English

Small-scale hero: massive-star enrichment in the Hercules dwarf spheroidal

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2015-06-05 v1

Abstract

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies are often conjectured to be the sites of the first stars. The best current contenders for finding the chemical imprints from the enrichment by those massive objects are the "ultrafaint dwarfs" (UFDs). Here we present evidence for remarkably low heavy element abundances in the metal poor Hercules UFD. Combined with other peculiar abundance patterns this indicates that Hercules was likely only influenced by very few, massive explosive events - thus bearing the traces of an early, localized chemical enrichment with only very little other contributions from other sources at later times.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1206.4302,
  title  = {Small-scale hero: massive-star enrichment in the Hercules dwarf spheroidal},
  author = {Andreas Koch and Francesca Matteucci and Sofia Feltzing},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.4302},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of `First Stars IV - from Hayashi to the future', M. Umemura, K. Omukai (eds.)