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Department of Physics | University of Durham |   | Level One |
Overview - By selecting stars with a range of colours and brightnesses off this true colour image of a small region in the globular cluster NGC104 (47 Tuc) you can investigate the structure of the cluster's Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram resulting from stellar evolution. The image is a composite made up of three separate images taken in the ultraviolet (3800Å, U), blue (4500Å, B) and visual (5500Å, V). The aim is to populate the H-R diagram sufficiently to answer the following questions:
Measuring the Colours and Magnitudes of Stars - The CCD image shown below is 750×450 pixels in size, with each pixel being 0.5 arcsec. When you click the cursor on the position of a star the program will centroid on that star (and draw a circle around the star selected) and then integrate the flux within the same aperture on the B and V images of the field, estimate the background in the region around the star and subtract this off the aperture fluxes to give the total flux in the B and V passbands. Converted into magnitudes these two fluxes will give the colour and apparent magnitude of the star, which are written to the output. These values are written both at the top of the image (for the current star) and should also all be listed on the Java console of your browser. The point will also be plotted on the figure in the attached window.
When a star lies in the Horizontal Branch region (marked by the box) of the H-R diagram note down the magnitude and colour of the star. By fitting the variation of magnitude with colour of the stars which you select in this region you should be able to estimate the apparent magnitude of the HB in NGC 104 at a fixed colour (B-V=0.5), and also the statistical error in your estimate. You will use this estimate to measure the distance to NGC 104.
When you decide you have a sufficient number of measurements to answer the questions listed above you can capture the H-R plot using XV (or similar), to make a hardcopy for yourself. Mark on this figure the regions associated with the different stellar phases discussed above.
From this figure then estimate the magnitude of the MSTO and the uncertainty in this estimate. Next you will convert this value into an estimate of the age of this globular cluster.