Multi-Element Abundance Measurements from Medium-Resolution Spectra. II. Catalog of Stars in Milky Way Dwarf Satellite Galaxies

Abstract

We present a catalog of Fe, Mg, Si, Ca, and Ti abundances for 2961 red giant stars that are likely members of eight dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way (MW): Sculptor, Fornax, Leo I, Sextans, Leo II, Canes Venatici I, Ursa Minor, and Draco. For the purposes of validating our measurements, we also observed 445 red giants in MW globular clusters and 21 field red giants in the MW halo. The measurements are based on Keck/DEIMOS medium-resolution spectroscopy combined with spectral synthesis. We estimate uncertainties in [Fe/H] by quantifying the dispersion of [Fe/H] measurements in a sample of stars in monometallic globular clusters. We estimate uncertainties in Mg, Si, Ca, and Ti abundances by comparing our medium-resolution spectroscopic measurements to high-resolution spectroscopic abundances of the same stars. For this purpose, our DEIMOS sample included 132 red giants with published high-resolution spectroscopy in globular clusters, the MW halo field, and dwarf galaxies. The standard deviations of the differences in [Fe/H] and [alpha/Fe] (the average of [Mg/Fe], [Si/Fe], [Ca/Fe], and [Ti/Fe]) between the two samples is 0.15 and 0.16, respectively. This catalog represents the largest sample of multi-element abundances in dwarf galaxies to date. The next papers in this series draw conclusions on the chemical evolution, gas dynamics, and star formation histories from the catalog presented here. The wide range of dwarf galaxy luminosity reveals the dependence of dwarf galaxy chemical evolution on galaxy stellar mass.

26 pages, 22 figures, 4 machine-readable tables (available in the source file; click "Other formats"); accepted for publication in ApJ Supplements; updated acknowledgments in v3

References in corpus (20)

• A grid of MARCS model atmospheres for late-type stars I. Methods and general properties
• The Kinematics of the Ultra-Faint Milky Way Satellites: Solving the Missing Satellite Problem
• Empirical Color Transformations Between SDSS Photometry and Other Photometric Systems
• New Grids of ATLAS9 Model Atmospheres
• The accretion origin of the Milky Way's stellar halo
• The Chemical Evolution of the Draco Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• Complexity on Small Scales III: Iron and alpha Element Abundances in the Carina Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• New Extremely Metal-Poor Stars in the Galactic Halo
• Exploring Halo Substructure with Giant Stars X. Extended Dark Matter or Tidal Disruption?: The Case for the Leo I Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• Metallicity and Alpha-Element Abundance Measurement in Red Giant Stars from Medium Resolution Spectra
• Setting UBVRI Photometric Zero-Points Using Sloan Digital Sky Survey ugriz Magnitudes
• Carbon Stars in the Hamburg/ESO Survey: Abundances
• The Araucaria Project. The Distance to the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy from infrared photometry of RR Lyrae stars
• The distance to the Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• Variable Stars in the Newly Discovered Milky Way Dwarf Spheroidal Satellite Canes Venatici I
• Carbon and Strontium Abundances of Metal-Poor Stars
• Fiducial Stellar Population Sequences for the u'g'r'i'z' System
• Chemical Inhomogeneities in the Milky Way Stellar Halo
• Draco, a flawless dwarf galaxy
• Chemical Abundances of the Leo II Dwarf Galaxy

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Multi-Element Abundance Measurements from Medium-Resolution Spectra. IV. Alpha Element Distributions in Milky Way Dwarf Satellite Galaxies
• Spectroscopic versus Photometric Metallicities: Milky Way Dwarf Spheroidal Companions as a Test Case