The star formation history of the Fornax dSph galaxy using the new synthetic color-magnitude diagram code IAC-STAR

Gallart, Carme; Aparicio, Antonio; Zinn, R.; Buonanno, R.; Hardy, E.; Marconi, G.
Referencia bibliográfica

Near-fields cosmology with dwarf elliptical galaxies, IAU Colloquium Proceedings of the international Astronomical Union 198, Held 14-18 March, Switzerland, edited by Jerjen, H.; Binggeli, B. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005., pp.25-29

Fecha de publicación:
0
2005
Número de autores
6
Número de autores del IAC
0
Número de citas
12
Número de citas referidas
11
Descripción
We present VLT-FORS1 color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) reaching the oldest main-sequence turnoffs for three fields at two galactocentric distances in the Fornax dSph galaxy. We derive the star formation history (SFH) for each field through comparison with synthetic CMDs and show that the main epoch of star formation has extended to more recent epochs toward the center of the galaxy. A small burst of star formation about 2 Gyr ago is a robust feature in the SFH of all fields. It might be related to the shell structure found in Fornax by Coleman et al. (2004), which in turn has been interpreted as the relic of a merger event that occurred in Fornax about 2 Gyr ago.