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Absolute $V$-band magnitudes and mass-to-light ratios of Galactic globular clusters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2020

H. Baumgardt*
Affiliation:
School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia
A. Sollima
Affiliation:
INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Gobetti 93/3, Bologna 40129, Italy
M. Hilker
Affiliation:
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, Garching 85748, Germany
*
Author for correspondence: H. Baumgardt, E-mail: h.baumgardt@uq.edu.au
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Abstract

We have used Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based photometry to determine total V-band magnitudes and mass-to-light ratios of more than 150 Galactic globular clusters. We do this by summing up the magnitudes of their individual member stars, using colour-magnitude information, Gaia DR2 proper motions, and radial velocities to distinguish cluster stars from background stars. Our new magnitudes confirm literature estimates for bright clusters with $V<8$, but can deviate by up to two magnitudes from literature values for fainter clusters. They lead to absolute mass-to-light ratios that are confined to the narrow range $1.4<M/L_V<2.5$, significantly smaller than what was found before. We also find a correlation between a cluster’s $M/L_V$ value and its age, in agreement with theoretical predictions. The $M/L_V$ ratios of globular clusters are also in good agreement with those predicted by stellar isochrones, arguing against a significant amount of dark matter inside globular clusters. We finally find that, in agreement with what has been seen in M 31, the magnitude distribution of outer halo globular clusters has a tail towards faint clusters that is absent in the inner parts of the Milky Way.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Astronomical Society of Australia
Figure 0

Figure 1. Illustration of our member star selection approach for the globular cluster NGC 6397. The left panel shows an 800” $\times$ 800” arcsec field centred on the cluster. Stars selected from HST/ACS observations are shown in green, stars from the ground-based photometry of Stetson et al. (2019) in blue. The dashed circles show the limits of the field for which we determine the cluster luminosity. The right panel shows a CMD of NGC 6397 with a 12 Gyr old PARSEC isochrone overlayed as solid line. Blue and green circles depict cluster members, while red crosses depict stars classified as non-members based on their CMD position, Gaia proper motion, or radial velocity. The dashed line marks the lower limit down to which we use observed stars. Circles mark radial velocity members.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Difference in the total magnitudes between this work and (from top to bottom) the 2010 version of Harris (1996) (H10), Dalessandro et al. (2012) (D12), and McLaughlin & van der Marel (2005) (M05). The differences increase for fainter clusters and can reach up to two magnitudes for individual clusters.

Figure 2

Table 1. Mean differences and standard deviation around the mean between our photometry and literature values for three different magnitude ranges.

Figure 3

Figure 3. Distribution of absolute magnitudes of Milky Way globular clusters. The top panel shows the full distribution, the middle panel the distribution of inner clusters with $R_G<15$ kpc, and the lower panel the distribution of outer clusters with $R_G>15$ kpc. The distribution of outer clusters contains a significantly larger fraction of low-luminosity clusters.

Figure 4

Figure 4. $M/L_V$ mass-to-light ratios derived using masses and distances from Baumgardt et al. (2019), extinction values from Harris (1996), and literature averaged V-band luminosities (top panel). The bottom panel shows the mass-to-light ratios derived with the same data but our V band magnitudes. The resulting $M/L_V$ ratios cover a much smaller scatter around the mean value (marked by a solid line).

Figure 5

Table 2. Relative contribution of stars in different evolutionary stages to the total V-band magnitudes for six clusters.

Figure 6

Figure 5. Dependence of mass-to-light ratio on the cluster ages for two different metallicity ranges. The $M/L$ ratio increases as a function of age in agreement with theoretical predictions. The plots also show the Spearman rank-order coefficient $r_s$ as well as the slope y of the best-fitting linear fit to the data.

Figure 7

Figure 6. Same as Figure 5 but this time showing the dependence of mass-to-light ratio on the mass function of clusters.

Figure 8

Figure 7. Illustration of our division of stars into different evolutionary stages for the high metallicity cluster NGC 6528 (left panel) and the low metallicity cluster NGC 7078 (right panel). Stars are split into blue stragglers (blue), horizontal branch stars (HB, black), red giant branch stars (RGB, red), and main sequence stars (green). Only stars that pass the various membership criteria detailed in Section 2 are shown.

Figure 9

Figure 8. Ratio of the measured $M/L_V$ ratios to the $M/L_V$ ratio predicted by different stellar-evolution models as a function of the cluster metallicity. Shown is a comparison against MIST isochrones (top left), PARSEC isochrones (top right), Dartmouth isochrones with enhanced $\alpha$ element ratios of [$\alpha$/Fe]=+0.2 and a model in which the $\alpha$-element abundances decrease for metal-rich clusters (lower right).