Is Dust Forming on the Red Giant Branch in 47 Tuc?

Abstract

Using Spitzer IRAC observations from the SAGE-SMC Legacy program and archived Spitzer IRAC data, we investigate dust production in 47 Tuc, a nearby massive Galactic globular cluster. A previous study detected infrared excess, indicative of circumstellar dust, in a large population of stars in 47 Tuc, spanning the entire Red Giant Branch (RGB). We show that those results suffered from effects caused by stellar blending and imaging artifacts and that it is likely that no stars below about 1 mag from the tip of the RGB are producing dust. The only stars that appear to harbor dust are variable stars, which are also the coolest and most luminous stars in the cluster.

Accepted for publication in ApJL

References in corpus (11)

• Molecules and dust production in the Magellanic Clouds
• The First Empirical Mass Loss Law for Population II Giants
• Giants in the globular cluster omega Centauri: dust production, mass loss and distance
• Winds of M- and S-type AGB stars: an unorthodox suggestion for the driving mechanism
• The Clusters AgeS Experiment (CASE). IV. Analysis of the Eclipsing Binary V69 in the Globular Cluster 47 Tuc
• Tracing the development of dust around evolved stars: The case of 47 Tuc
• A Spitzer Space Telescope far-infrared spectral atlas of compact sources in the Magellanic Clouds. I. The Large Magellanic Cloud
• Dust, pulsation, chromospheres and their role in driving mass loss from red giants in Galactic globular clusters
• A Spitzer Space Telescope Atlas of omega Centauri: The Stellar Population, Mass Loss, and the Intracluster Medium
• Stellar Populations and Mass-Loss in M15: A Spitzer Detection of Dust in the Intra-Cluster Medium
• Spitzer Space Telescope evidence in NGC 6791: no super-mass-loss at super-solar metallicity to explain helium white dwarfs?

Cited by in corpus (35)

• A new generation of PARSEC-COLIBRI stellar isochrones including the TP-AGB phase
• Asteroseismology of old open clusters with Kepler: direct estimate of the integrated RGB mass loss in NGC6791 and NGC6819
• The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury IX. Constraining asymptotic giant branch evolution with old metal-poor galaxies
• Surveying the Agents of Galaxy Evolution in the Tidally-Stripped, Low Metallicity Small Magellanic Cloud (SAGE-SMC). I. Overview
• Production of dust by massive stars at high redshift
• Surveying the Agents of Galaxy Evolution in the Tidally-Stripped, Low Metallicity Small Magellanic Cloud (SAGE-SMC) II. Cool Evolved Stars
• The Dust Budget of the SMC: Are AGB Stars the Primary Dust Source at Low Metallicity?
• The SAGE-Spec Spitzer Legacy program: The life-cycle of dust and gas in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Point source classification I
• Origin of apparent period variations in eclipsing post-common-envelope binaries
• Evolution of Thermally Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars IV. Constraining Mass-Loss & Lifetimes of Low Mass, Low Metallicity AGB Stars
• First versus second generation planet formation in post common envelope binary (PCEB) planetary systems
• The SAGE-Spec Spitzer Legacy program: The life-cycle of dust and gas in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Point source classification III
• Fundamental parameters, integrated RGB mass loss and dust production in the Galactic globular cluster 47 Tucanae
• The Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey: III. A constraint on dust grain lifetime in early-type galaxies
• Dust production and mass loss in the Galactic globular cluster 47 Tucanae
• On the red giant branch mass loss in 47 Tucanae: Constraints from the horizontal branch morphology
• An empirical mass-loss law for Population II giants from the Spitzer-IRAC survey of Galactic globular clusters
• Integrated Mass Loss of Evolved Stars in M4 using Asteroseismology
• Dust is forming along the red giant branch of 47 TUC
• Mass loss law for red giant stars in simple population globular clusters
• The dustiest Post-Main sequence stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• The VISIR@VLT Mid-IR view of 47Tuc: A further step in solving the puzzle of RGB mass loss
• Asteroseismology of luminous red giants with Kepler. II. Dependence of mass loss on pulsations and radiation
• The VMC Survey. XI. Radial Stellar Population Gradients in the Galactic Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae
• ALMA reveals sunburn: CO dissociation around AGB stars in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae
• Modelling chromospheric line profiles as diagnostics of velocity fields in ω Centauri red giant stars
• VISTA's view of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy and southern Galactic Bulge
• A Spitzer Space Telescope survey of extreme Asymptotic Giant Branch stars in M32
• Evidence that Mass Loss on the Red Giant Branch Decreases with Metallicity
• Circumstellar CO in metal-poor stellar winds: the highly irradiated globular cluster star 47 Tucanae V3
• Stellar-Encounter Driven Red-Giant Star Mass-Loss in Globular Clusters
• Comparing Mid-Infrared Globular Cluster Colors With Population Synthesis Models
• Circumstellar CO J = 3-2 detected around the evolving metal-poor ([Fe/H] ~ -1.15 dex) AGB star RU Vulpeculae
• The Identification of Extreme Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars and Red Supergiants in M33 by 24 μm Variability
• XMM-Newton follow-up of two eROSITA X-ray binary candidates