Sodium-Oxygen Anticorrelation and Neutron-capture Elements in Omega Centauri Stellar Populations

Marino, A. F.; Milone, A. P.; Piotto, G.; Villanova, S.; Gratton, R.; D'Antona, F.; Anderson, J.; Bedin, L. R.; Bellini, A.; Cassisi, S.; Geisler, D.; Renzini, A.; Zoccali, M.
Bibliographical reference

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 731, Issue 1, article id. 64 (2011).

Advertised on:
4
2011
Number of authors
13
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
142
Refereed citations
120
Description
Omega Centauri is no longer the only globular cluster known to contain multiple stellar populations, yet it remains the most puzzling. Due to the extreme way in which the multiple stellar population phenomenon manifests in this cluster, it has been suggested that it may be the remnant of a larger stellar system. In this work, we present a spectroscopic investigation of the stellar populations hosted in the globular cluster ω Centauri to shed light on its still puzzling chemical enrichment history. With this aim, we used FLAMES+GIRAFFE@VLT to observe 300 stars distributed along the multimodal red giant branch of this cluster, sampling with good statistics the stellar populations of different metallicities. We determined chemical abundances for Fe, Na, O, and n-capture elements Ba and La. We confirm that ω Centauri exhibits large star-to-star variations in iron with [Fe/H] ranging from ~-2.0 to ~-0.7 dex. Barium and lanthanum abundances of metal-poor stars are correlated with iron, up to [Fe/H] ~-1.5, while they are almost constant (or at least have only a moderate increase) in the more metal-rich populations. There is an extended Na-O anticorrelation for stars with [Fe/H] lsim-1.3 while more metal-rich stars are almost all Na-rich. Sodium was found to mildly increase with iron over the entire metallicity range. Based on data collected at the European Southern Observatory with the VLT-UT2, Paranal, Chile.
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NGC 2808 Globular Cluster
Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies

The general aim of the project is to research the structure, evolutionary history and formation of galaxies through the study of their resolved stellar populations, both from photometry and spectroscopy. The group research concentrates in the most nearby objects, namely the Local Group galaxies including the Milky Way and M33 under the hypothesis

Martín
López Corredoira