BVI Photometry and the Red Giant Branch Luminosity Function of M15

Abstract

We present new $BVI$ photometry containing 40,000 stars of the Galactic globular cluster M15 (NGC 7078) covering a $25\times 25$ arcminute area centered on the cluster with a magnitude range from the tip of the Red Giant Branch to three magnitudes below the main sequence turn-off. Using $\alpha$-enhanced Dartmouth Stellar Evolution Program models, we find an age of $13.0\pm 1.0$ Gyr and distance modulus of $(m-M{)}_V=15.4\pm 0.1$ through isochrone fitting. Unlike previous works, we find good agreement between the observed completeness-corrected stellar luminosity function and models.

arXiv comment9 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in PASP

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Accurate distances to Galactic globular clusters through a combination of Gaia EDR3, HST and literature data
• Red-Giant Branch Stellar Cores as Macroscopic Dark Matter Detectors