Bibcode
Dalessandro, E.; Lanzoni, B.; Ferraro, F. R.; Rood, R. T.; Milone, A.; Piotto, G.; Valenti, E.
Bibliographical reference
Memorie della Società Astronomica Italiana, v.79, p.698 (2008)
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2008
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Refereed citations
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Description
We have used multi-band high resolution HST WFPC2 and ACS observations
combined with wide field ground-based observations to study the blue
straggler star (BSS) population in the galactic globular cluster NGC
6388. As in several other clusters we have studied, the BSS distribution
is found to be bimodal: highly peaked in the cluster center, rapidly
decreasing at intermediate radii, and rising again at larger radii. In
other clusters the sparsely populated intermediate region (or ``zone of
avoidance'') corresponds well to that part of the cluster where
dynamical friction would have caused the BSS or their binary progenitors
to sunk to the cluster center. Instead, in NGC 6388, BSS still populate
a region that have been cleaned out by dynamical friction effects, thus
suggesting that dynamical friction is somehow less efficient than
expected.