Chemical Abundances of New Member Stars in the Tucana II Dwarf Galaxy
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Chiti_2018_ApJ_857_74.pdf
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Author(s)
Ji, Alexander P.
Jerjen, Helmut
Kim, Dongwon
Norris, John E.
Chiti, Anirudh
Frebel, Anna L.
Date Issued
April 2018
Journal
Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Citation
Chiti, Anirudh et al “Chemical Abundances of New Member Stars in the Tucana II Dwarf Galaxy.” The Astrophysical Journal 857, 1 (April 2018): 74 © 2018 American Astronomical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We present chemical abundance measurements for seven stars with metallicities ranging from Fe/H] =-3.3 to [Fe/H] =-2.4 in the Tucana II ultra-faint dwarf galaxy (UFD), based on high-resolution spectra obtained with the MIKE spectrograph on the 6.5 m Magellan-Clay Telescope. For three stars, we present detailed chemical abundances for the first time. Of those, two stars are newly discovered members of Tucana II and were selected as probable members from deep narrowband photometry of the Tucana II UFD taken with the SkyMapper telescope. This result demonstrates the potential for photometrically identifying members of dwarf galaxy systems based on chemical composition. One new star was selected from the membership catalog of Walker et al. The other four stars in our sample have been reanalyzed, following additional observations. Overall, six stars have chemical abundances that are characteristic of the UFD stellar population. The seventh star shows chemical abundances that are discrepant from the other Tucana II members and an atypical, higher strontium abundance than what is expected for typical UFD stars. While unlikely, its strontium abundance raises the possibility that it may be a foreground metal-poor halo star with the same systemic velocity as Tucana II. If we were to exclude this star, Tucana II would satisfy the criteria to be a surviving first galaxy. Otherwise, this star implies that Tucana II has likely experienced somewhat extended chemical evolution.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/AAB4FC
