HST/WFPC2 Imaging of the Dwarf Satellites And XI and And XIII : HB Morphology and RR Lyraes

TL;DR

This study analyzes the stellar populations, horizontal branch morphologies, and RR Lyrae stars in the faint M31 dwarf satellites And XI and And XIII using HST imaging, revealing their metallicities, distances, and population characteristics.

Contribution

It introduces a new template light curve fitting routine (RRFIT) for detecting and characterizing RR Lyrae populations in dwarf galaxies.

Findings

RRab stars have mean periods of 0.621 and 0.648 days in And XI and And XIII.

Metallicities are approximately -1.75 and -1.74, consistent with RGB slope estimates.

Distances are 24.33 and 24.62 in distance modulus for And XI and And XIII.

Abstract

We present a study of the stellar populations in two faint M31 dwarf satellites, Andromeda XI and Andromeda XIII. Using archival images from the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), we characterize the horizontal branch (HB) morphologies and the RR Lyrae (RRL) populations of these two faint dwarf satellites. Our new template light curve fitting routine (RRFIT) has been used to detect and characterize RRL populations in both galaxies. The mean periods of RRab (RR0) stars in And XI and And XIII are $<P_{ab}>$=0.621 $\pm$ 0.026 (error1) $\pm$ 0.022 (error2), and $<P_{ab}>$=0.648 $\pm$ 0.026 (error1) $\pm$ 0.022 (error2) respectively, where "error1" represents the standard error of the mean, while "error2" is based on our synthetic light curve simulations. The RRL populations in these galaxies show a lack of RRab stars with high amplitudes ($Amp(V) > 1.0 $ mag) and relatively short periods ($P_{ab}$ $\sim$ 0.5 days), yet their period -- V band amplitude (P-Amp(V)) relations track the relation defined by the M31 field halo RRL populations at $\sim$ 11 kpc from the center of M31. The metallicities of the RRab stars are calculated via a relationship between [Fe/H], Log P$_{ab}$, and Amp(V). The resultant abundances ($[Fe/H]_{And XI}=-1.75$; $[Fe/H]_{And XIII}=-1.74$) are consistent with the values calculated from the RGB slope indicating that our measurements are not significantly affected by RRL evolutionary away from the zero age horizontal branch. The distance to each galaxy, based on the absolute V magnitudes of the RRab stars, is $(m-M)_{0,V}$=24.33 $\pm$ 0.05 for And XI and $(m-M)_{0,V}$=24.62 $\pm$ 0.05 for And XIII. We discuss the origins of And XI and And XIII based on a comparative analysis of the luminosity-metallicity (L-M) relation of Local Group dwarf galaxies.