Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-1998

Publication Title

The Astronomical Journal

Department

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Abstract

We discuss a Johnson-Cousins V- and I-band CCD mosaic survey of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph) to V ~ 22. We covered UMi with 27 105 × 105 overlapping CCD frames, each frame consisting of two 300 s exposures in each of V and I. We also observed several regions ~3° from UMi to obtain an estimate of contamination by galaxies and Galactic stars. We report the first H-R diagram of an entire dSph. Separation of dwarf stars from foreground stars by color allows a robust estimation of the structural parameters of UMi. We examine earlier evidence of two lumps in the UMi stellar distribution. We detect a statistically significant asymmetry in the stellar distribution of UMi along the major axis. Structure in the stellar distribution of UMi might indicate a tidal origin for UMi's high observed mass-to-light ratio. We demonstrate a technique for obtaining the absolute magnitude of UMi from horizontal-branch star counts compared with M92; this method of luminosity estimation is independent of the distance to UMi. We obtain MV = -8.87 ± σ , where σ = 0.14 if M92 is a perfect calibrator and σ 0.35 is an upper bound on the error arising from differences in stellar populations. Our value for MV is consistent with earlier measurements and has a smaller uncertainty.

DOI

10.1086/300360

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