Metallicities of Young Open Clusters I: NGC 7160 and NGC 2232

TL;DR

This study analyzes the metallicities of young open clusters NGC 7160 and NGC 2232, revealing super-solar metallicities and detailed elemental abundance patterns, contributing to understanding of chemical compositions in young stellar populations.

Contribution

First moderate-resolution spectroscopic analysis of NGC 7160 and NGC 2232, providing detailed metallicity and elemental abundance measurements for these young clusters.

Findings

NGC 7160 has mean [Fe/H] = 0.16 ± 0.03.

NGC 2232 has mean [Fe/H] = 0.22 or 0.32, depending on temperature scale.

NGC 2232 shows underabundance in Al and Si.

Abstract

We present a moderate-resolution spectroscopic analysis of the 10-25 Myr clusters NGC 7160 and NGC 2232, using observations obtained with the WIYN 3.5-m telescope. Both NGC 7160 and NGC 2232 are found to have super-solar metallicities, with a mean [Fe/H] = 0.16 \pm 0.03 (s.e.m.) for NGC 7160, and 0.22 \pm 0.09 (s.e.m.) or 0.32 \pm 0.08 for NGC 2232, depending on the adopted temperature scale. NGC 7160 exhibits solar distributions of Na, Fe-peak, and {\alpha}-elements. NGC 2232 is underabundant in light elements Al and Si, by ~0.25 and ~ 0.15 dex, respectively; [Ni/Fe] is roughly solar. The abundance of lithium in NGC 2232 stars is in agreement with undepleted values reported for other cluster main sequence stars. Our abundances are similar to other metal-rich open clusters and Galactic thin and thick disk stars.