Bibcode
Cesetti, M.; Held, E. V.; Gullieuszik, M.; Rizzi, L.; Battaglia, G.; Cole, A.; da Costa, G.; Mateo, M.; Olszewski, E.; Tolstoy, E.; Walker, M.
Bibliographical reference
EAS Publications Series, Volume 48, 2011, pp.69-70
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7
2011
Citations
1
Refereed citations
1
Description
We studied the stellar populations of Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy
using HST/WFPC2 imaging of 7 galaxy fields. Our observations reach the
oldest main-sequence turn-off, revealing distinct stars formation
episodes and allowing us to address the evolution of this prototype
dwarf spheroidal galaxy known to have experienced an extended history of
star formation. From our HST data, spatial gradients in the stellar
content of Fornax emerge with greater clarity. The outermost fields show
only stars with ages between 7-12Gyr, while the intermediate region
hosts a stellar population between 4-10Gyr, and stars younger of 2 Gyr
are found in the innermost fields. A clearly visible gap in the subgiant
branch points to bimodality in the main star formation episode. Our
observations also indicate that the inner clump detected by Coleman et
al. (2004) is characterized by the presence of young stars with age
about 1.8 Gyr.