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The Chemical Evolution of Milky Way Satellite Galaxies from Keck Spectroscopy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2015

Evan N. Kirby*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, University of California, 4129 Reines Hall, Irvine, CA 92697, USA email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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The primary data product of a recent Keck/DEIMOS spectroscopic campaign of eight Milky Way dwarf spheroidal (dSph) satellite galaxies is a catalog of nearly 3000 red giants with spectral synthesis-based abundance measurements of Fe and the α elements Mg, Si, Ca, and Ti. The dSph metallicity distributions show that the histories of the less luminous dSphs were marked by massive amounts of metal loss. The [α/Fe] distributions reveal that the early star formation histories (at a lookback time of >12 Gyr) of most dSphs were very similar and that Type Ia supernova ejecta contributed to the abundances of all but the most metal-poor ([Fe/H] < −2.5) stars. This large data set allows inferences of past outflows from the dSphs in order to determine their contribution to the metal content of the intergalactic medium.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2015 

References

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