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arXiv · 0909.0202

M32: Is There An Ancient, Metal-Poor Population?

G. Fiorentino·A. Monachesi·S. Trager·T. Lauer·A. Saha·K. Mighell·W. L. Freedman·A. Dressler·C. J. Grillmair·E. Tolstoy
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Abstract

We observed two fields near M32 with the ACS/HRC on board the Hubble Space Telescope, located at distances of about 1.8' and 5.4' (hereafter F1 and F2, respectively) from the center of M32. To obtain a very detailed and deep color-magnitude diagram (CMD) and to look for short period variability, we obtained time-series imaging of each field in 32-orbit-long exposures using the F435W (B) and F555W (V) filters, spanning a temporal range of 2 days per filter. We focus on our detection of variability on RR Lyrae variable stars, which represents the only way to obtain information about the presence of a very old population (larger than 10 Gyr) in M32 from optical data. Here we present results obtained from the detection of 31 RR Lyrae in these fields: 17 in F1 and 14 in F2.

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G. Fiorentino, A. Monachesi, S. Trager, T. Lauer, A. Saha, K. Mighell, W. L. Freedman, A. Dressler, C. J. Grillmair, E. Tolstoy. 2009-09-01. M32: Is There An Ancient, Metal-Poor Population?. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3246449

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