Bibcode
Ciardullo, R.; Williams, B. F.; Durrell, P. R.; Vinciguerra, M.; Feldmeier, J. J.; Jacoby, G. H.; Sigurdsson, S.; von Hippel, T.; Ferguson, H.; Tanvir, N.; Arnaboldi, M.; Gerhard, O.; Aguerri, A.; Freeman, K. C.
Bibliographical reference
American Astronomical Society Meeting 207, #80.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 37, p.1297
Advertised on:
12
2005
Citations
2
Refereed citations
1
Description
The Virgo Intra-Cluster Stars (VICS) project is a 37 orbit HST program
to study the stellar constituents of Virgo's intracluster space. The
survey is centered on a region of space 180 kpc (projected) from the
nearest major galaxy (M 86), at a location where the underlying cluster
surface brightness is μ V ˜ 27.5 ± 0.5. The
data include extremely deep V (F606W) and I (F814W)-band images with the
ACS, parallel I-band images with WFPC2, and parallel J and H images with
NIC3. The ACS images alone contain ˜ 4000 intracluster red giant
candidates, 4 probable intracluster globular clusters, one previously
uncatalogued dwarf spheroidal galaxy, and many V-band dropouts, both
resolved and unresolved. The principle goal of the survey is to
determine the metallicity distribution of Virgo's intracluster stars and
thereby constrain their origins. However, since the images extend down
to I lim ˜ 28.7 and V lim ˜ 30.0, they
are amongst the deepest HST images ever taken. The data therefore have
many other uses in astrophysics.
Support for this work was provided by NASA through grant number GO-10131
from the Space Telescope Science Institute.