Spheroid luminosity and mass functions from Hubble Space Telescope star counts

被引:117
作者
Gould, A
Flynn, C
Bahcall, JN
机构
[1] Ohio State Univ, Dept Astron, Columbus, OH 43210 USA
[2] Tuorla Observ, FIN-21500 Piikkio, Finland
[3] Inst Adv Study, Princeton, NJ 08540 USA
关键词
stars : luminosity function; mass function; subdwarfs; surveys;
D O I
10.1086/306023
中图分类号
P1 [天文学];
学科分类号
0704 ;
摘要
We analyze 166 spheroid subdwarfs (6.5 < M-V < 14.5) found in 53 fields observed with the Wide Field Planetary Camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. The fields cover 221 arcmin(2) over a wide range of directions. The spheroid luminosity function (LF) is inconsistent at about the 3 sigma level with the local spheroid LF of Dahn et al. even when the normalization of the latter is corrected to take account of the latest data on spheroid kinematics. The difference may reflect systematic errors in one of the two studies or features of the spheroid spatial distribution that are not included in the simplest models. The mass function, which shows no obvious structure, can be represented by a power law, dN/dlnM proportional to M-alpha, with alpha = 0.25 +/- 0.32 over the mass range 0.71 M. > M > 0.09 M.. The spheroid therefore does not contribute significantly to microlensing unless the mass function changes slope dramatically in the substellar range. The total local mass density of spheroid stars (including remnants and unseen binary companions) is rho similar to 6.4 x 10(-5) M. pc(-3), with an uncertainty of about 50%. The power-law indices alpha = 0.25 for the spheroid and alpha = 0.44 for the disk (both uncorrected for binaries) are similar to those of globular clusters of moderate-to-high metallicity.
引用
收藏
页码:798 / 808
页数:11
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