UBC-led team uncovers faintest stars ever seen in ancient star cluster

Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the team took hundreds of high-resolution photos and compared the images pixel-by-pixel to identify the dimmest stars in the globular star cluster NGC 6397.

“The light from these faint stars is so dim that it is equivalent to that produced by a birthday candle on the Moon, as seen from Earth,” says Richer, lead investigator of the project, which was chosen over several thousand other proposals to gain almost five days access to Hubble.

The team surveyed two distinct stellar populations — red dwarfs and white dwarfs — in NGC 6397. Located in the southern constellation Ara, approximately 8,500 light-years away, NGC 6397 is the second closest globular star cluster to Earth.

At approximately eight per cent the mass of the Sun, the lowest mass red dwarfs are the least massive stars in the Universe still capable of burning hydrogen in their cores and supporting stable nuclear reactions.

White dwarfs are the burnt out remnants of more massive stars that died long ago. By measuring the temperatures of white dwarfs — much like checking the temperature of smoldering coals in a campfire to estimate how long ago it was burning — astronomers are able to determine the star’s age. This information provides important clues to the age of the globular cluster, which formed in the early Universe.

Analysing this relic population of white dwarfs is also the only way to calculate the original number of high-mass stars in the cluster.

“These stars, which died long ago, were among the first to have formed in the Universe,” says Richer, the world’s leading expert in using white dwarfs as a tool for dating globular clusters. “Pinning down their age narrows down the age range of the Universe.”

NB: Detailed results will be published in the Aug. 18 edition of the journal Science. For an advance copy of the paper, contact Natasha Pinol, AAAS / Science at 202.326.7088 or npinol@aaas.org.

Prof. Richer will present the team’s findings at an Aug. 17 press conference during the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague. For more information, visit http://www.astronomy2006.com.

Electronic images are available at http://hubblesite.org/news/2006/37/.

High-resolution photos of Prof. Richer and star cluster NGC 6397 is available at http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/download/.

Biography: Harvey B. Richer
Professor Harvey Richer was born in Montreal, Quebec. He studied at McGill University and obtained his doctorate in physics and astronomy from the University of Rochester.

Richer has been at the University of British Columbia since the early 1970s. He has received various awards and distinctions including: Canada-U.S. Fulbright Scholar (2005), Canada Council for the Arts Killam Fellowship (2001-03), and the Gemini Scientist for Canada (2000-03).

His research is largely focused on stellar astronomy and on what resolved systems of stars can tell us about dark matter, the age of the Universe, the dynamical evolution of stellar systems, and the formation of galaxies. To investigate these diverse subjects, he observes a wide range of objects, including nearby stars, open and globular star clusters, and the resolved components of our neighbouring galaxies.

To accomplish his research goals, he uses a variety of telescopes, particularly the Twin Gemini Telescopes, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.

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