Journal
ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS
Volume 527, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
EDP SCIENCES S A
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201016066
Keywords
stars: general; Hertzsprung-Russell and C-M diagrams; stars: low-mass; stars: luminosity function, mass function; stars: Population II; globular clusters: general
Categories
Funding
- INAF
- Science and Technology Ministry of the Kingdom of Spain [CSD 2006-00070, AYA2004-06343, AYA2007-3E3507]
- IAC [310394]
- STFC [ST/H002391/1, PP/E001149/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [PP/E001149/1, ST/H002391/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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We present new measurements of the magnitude of the main sequence turn off and the red giant branch bump in the luminosity function of a sample of Galactic globular clusters with updated estimates of [Fe/H] and [alpha/Fe], employing photometric data collected with the Advanced Camera for Survey onboard the HST. We compare measured and predicted values of the magnitude difference between these two features, a rarely employed diagnostic of the internal structure of low-mass stars at the beginning of their red giant evolution. Our analysis discloses a clear discrepancy between theory and observations, because the theoretical red giant branch bump magnitudes are too bright by on average similar to 0.2 mag. This corroborates results from the more widely studied magnitude difference between horizontal branch and red giant bump, avoiding the well known problems associated with determining the horizontal branch level from colour-magnitude diagrams and with uncertainties in the luminosity of horizontal branch stellar models. We briefly discuss several potential solutions of this discrepancy.
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