Star formation history of And XVIII: a dwarf spheroidal galaxy in isolation

Abstract

We present a photometric study of the Andromeda XVIII dwarf spheroidal galaxy associated with M31, and situated well outside of the virial radius of the M31 halo. The galaxy was resolved into stars with Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys revealing the old red giant branch and red clump. With the new observational data we determined the Andromeda XVIII distance to be D = 1.33+-0.08 Mpc using the tip of red giant branch method. Thus, the dwarf is situated at the distance of 579 kpc from M31. We model the star formation history of Andromeda XVIII from the stellar photometry and Padova theoretical stellar isochrones. An ancient burst of star formation occurred 12-14 Gyr ago. There is no sign of recent/ongoing star formation in the last 1.5 Gyr. The mass fractions of the ancient and intermediate age stars are 34 and 66 per cent, respectively, and the total stellar mass is 4.2x10^6 Msun. It is probable that the galaxy has not experienced an interaction with M31 in the past. We also discuss star formation processes of dSphs KKR 25, KKs 03, as well as dTr KK 258. Their star formation histories were uniformly measured by us from HST/ACS observations. All the galaxies are situated well beyond the Local Group and the two dSphs KKR 25 and KKs 03 are extremely isolated. Evidently, the evolution of these objects has proceeded without influence of neighbours.

10 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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• The Tucana dwarf spheroidal: a distant backsplash galaxy of M31?
• Spatial segregation impact on star formation in nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies
• Kinematics and metallicity of the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Andromeda XVIII
• A nearby isolated dwarf: star formation and structure of ESO 006-001
• Star Formation Histories of Dwarf Spheroidal and Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies in the Local Universe
• Line-of-sight mass estimator and the masses of the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy