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Population Gradients in Local Group Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies

The Astronomical Journal2001Vol. 122(6), pp. 3092–3105

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Daniel Harbeck, E. K. Grebel, Jon A. Holtzman, Puragra Guhathakurta, W. Brandner, D. Geisler, Ata Sarajedini, Andrew E. Dolphin, Denise Hurley‐Keller, Mario Mateo

Abstract

We present a systematic and homogeneous analysis of population gradients for the Local Group dwarf spheroidals (dSphs) Carina, Sculptor, Sextans, Tucana, Andromeda I-III, V, and VI. For all of the Milky Way companions studied here we find significant population gradients. The same is true for the remote dSph Tucana located at the outskirts of the LG. Among the M 31 dSph companions only Andromeda I and VI show obvious gradients. In all cases where a HB morphology gradient is visible, the red HB stars are more centrally concentrated. The occurence of a HB morphological gradient shows a correlation with a morphology gradient in the red giant branch. It seems likely that metallicity is the driver of the gradients in Sextans, Sculptor, Tucana, and Andromeda VI, while age is an important factor in Carina. We find no evidence that the vicinity of a nearby massive spiral galaxy influences the formation of the population gradients.

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