Barium abundance in the central part of the dSph Fornax galaxy

TL;DR

This study revisits barium abundance in giant stars of the Fornax dwarf galaxy using NLTE synthesis, revealing similarities with Milky Way barium evolution at comparable metallicities.

Contribution

It provides new NLTE-based barium abundance measurements in Fornax giants, showing their evolution parallels that of the Milky Way at similar metallicities.

Findings

Barium abundance in Fornax giants is similar to Milky Way stars at -1 to -0.5 metallicity.

NLTE synthesis yields more accurate barium abundances.

Fornax's barium evolution mirrors Milky Way's at corresponding epochs.

Abstract

We revisited barium abundance in a sample of giant stars in the dwarf spheroidal Fornax galaxy. Non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) synthesis was used to derive the barium abundance from two Ba II lines. Our new NLTE result for barium shows that in the range of metallicities from -1 to -0.5 the abundance of this element is almost the same as in the stars of the Milky Way. We conclude that the evolution of barium abundance in the dSph Fornax galaxy resembles that of the Milky Way at the epoch of the corresponding metallicity level.