Spectroscopy of UMa II and Coma Ber Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Frebel A.
  2. Simon J.D.
  3. Geha M.
  4. Willman B.
  5. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

We present spectra of six metal-poor stars in two of the ultra-faint dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way (MW), Ursa Major II, and Coma Berenices obtained with the Keck/High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES). These observations include the first high-resolution spectroscopic observations of extremely metal-poor ([Fe/H]<-3.0) stars not belonging to the MW halo field star population. We obtain abundance measurements and upper limits for 26 elements between carbon and europium. The entire sample of stars spans a range of -3.2<[Fe/H]<-2.3, and we confirm that each galaxy contains a large intrinsic spread of Fe abundances. A comparison with MW halo stars of similar metallicities reveals substantial agreement between the abundance patterns of the ultra-faint dwarf galaxies and the MW halo for the light, {alpha}, and iron-peak elements (C to Zn). The abundances of neutron-capture elements (Sr to Eu) in the ultra-faint dwarf galaxies are extremely low, consistent with the most metal-poor halo stars, but not with the typical halo abundance pattern at [Fe/H]>~-3.0. Not only are our results broadly consistent with a galaxy formation model that predicts that massive dwarf galaxies are the source of the metal-rich component ([Fe/H]>-2.5) of the MW halo, but they also suggest that the faintest known dwarfs may be the primary contributors to the metal-poor end of the MW halo metallicity distribution.

Keywords
  1. line-intensities
  2. chemical-abundances
  3. chemically-peculiar-stars
  4. spectroscopy
  5. galaxies
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2010ApJ...708..560F
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/708/560
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/708/560
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.17080560

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History

2012-03-01T09:20:44Z
Resource record created
2012-03-01T09:20:44Z
Created
2017-06-21T08:22:33Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr