Measuring abundance spreads in globular clusters using heterogenous data
Abstract
Models of the formation of globular clusters must explain the internal spreads in the abundance of heavy elements amongst their stars. Accurate measurements of these spreads is confounded by both statistical and systematic challenges, particularly in the case of iron abundances where the intrinsic spread is small compared to the uncertainty on the measurement for each individual star. We present a method to combine heterogenous data sets to get better measurements, present a catalog of the iron abundance spreads in Milky Way globular clusters, and discuss how we can interpret those spreads as due to self-enrichment during cluster formation and/or stripping of dwarf galaxies.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #235
- Pub Date:
- January 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AAS...23517804B