An empirical tool to derive metallicity, reddening and distance for old stellar populations from near IR Color Magnitude Diagrams

Abstract

We present an empirical method to derive photometric metallicity, reddening and distance to old stellar populations by using a few major features of the Red Giant Branch (RGB) in near IR color magnitude diagrams. We combine the observed RGB features with a set of equations linking the global metallicity [M/H] to suitable RGB parameters (colors, magnitudes and slope), as calibrated from a homogeneous sample of Galactic Globular Clusters with different metallicities. This technique can be applied to efficiently derive the main population parameters of old stellar systems, in the view of using ground-based adaptive optics and space facilities to probe the stellar content of remote galaxies.

16 pages, 4 figures, accepted for pubblication on ApJ

References in corpus (2)

• On the Iron content of NGC 1978 in the LMC: a metal rich, chemically homogeneous cluster
• Red Giant stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud clusters

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Near-IR properties of 24 Globular Clusters in the Galactic Bulge
• Proper Motions in the Galactic Bulge: Plaut's Window
• Ultra-deep GEMINI near-infrared observations of the bulge globular cluster NGC 6624
• Discovery of Two Galaxies Deeply Embedded in the Great Attractor Wall
• Chemical Abundances of the Highly Obscured Galactic Globular Clusters 2MASS GC02 and Mercer 5