Spectral energy distributions and masses of 304 M31 old star clusters

Journal Article · Sun Feb 01 04:00:00 EST 2015 · Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-6256/149/2/56· OSTI ID:22342135

Ma, Jun; Wang, Song; Wu, Zhenyu; Zhang, Tianmeng; Zou, Hu; Nie, Jun dan; Zhou, Zhiming; Zhou, Xu ^[1]; Wu, Jianghua ^[2]; Du, Cuihua ^[3]; Yuan, Qirong ^[4]

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1. Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100012 (China)
2. Department of Astronomy, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875 (China)
3. College of Physical Sciences, Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049 (China)
4. Department of Physics, Nanjing Normal University, WenYuan Road 1, Nanjing 210046 (China)

This paper presents CCD multicolor photometry for 304 old star clusters in the nearby spiral galaxy M31, from which the photometry of 55 star clusters is first obtained. The observations were carried out as a part of the Beijing–Arizona–Taiwan–Connecticut Multicolor Sky Survey from 1995 February to 2008 March, using 15 intermediate-band filters covering 3000–10000 Å. Detailed comparisons show that our photometry is in agreement with previous measurements. Based on the ages and metallicities from Caldwell et al. and the photometric measurements here, we estimated the clusters’ masses by comparing their multicolor photometry with stellar population synthesis models. The results show that the sample clusters have masses between ∼3×10{sup 4}M{sub ⊙} and ∼10{sup 7}M{sub ⊙} with a peak of ∼4×10{sup 5}M{sub ⊙}. The masses here are in good agreement with those in previous studies. Combined with the masses of young star clusters of M31 from Wang et al., we find that the peak mass of the old clusters is 10 times that of young clusters.

• OSTI ID: 22342135
• Journal Information: Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online), Journal Name: Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online) Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 149; ISSN 1538-3881
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
CATALOGS
CHARGE-COUPLED DEVICES
CONNECTICUT
COVERINGS
ENERGY SPECTRA
FILTERS
GALAXIES
MASS
METALLICITY
PHOTOMETRY
STAR CLUSTERS