Abundance patterns in the Draco, Sextans, and Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxies

The Keck I telescope and the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) have been used to obtain spectra for red giant stars belonging to the Draco, Sextans, and Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies. An analysis of these spectra is presented, along with abundance ratios for more than 20 elements. The resulting database of element abundances for 17 dSph stars is the most extensive yet assembled for stars in such environments. Our principal findings are summarized as follows. (1) There is unambiguous evidence for a large internal dispersion in metallicity in all three galaxies : our program stars span a range of Delta [Fe/H] = 1.53, 1.40, and 0.73 dex in Draco, Sextans, and Ursa Minor, respectively. (2) The abundance patterns among the dSph stars are remarkably uniform, suggesting that three galaxies have similar nucleosynthetic histories and, presumably, similar initial mass functions. (3) A comparison of the measured element abundance ratios for our sample of dSph stars with published values for Galactic halo and disk field stars suggests that the dSph galaxies have dex, 0.02 less than or similar to [alpha /Fe] less than or similar to 0.13 whereas the halo field star sample has [alpha /Fe] similar to 0.28 dex over the same range in metallicity. (4) The most metal-rich dSph stars in our sample have [Y/Fe] abundances that are significantly lower than those measured for halo field stars of similar metallicity, while the measured [Ba/Eu] ratios for the dSph stars suggest that the early chemical evolution of these galaxies was dominated by the r-process. Taken together, these results suggest that the Galactic halo is unlikely to have assembled, in its entirety, through the disruption of dwarf galaxies similar to the low-luminosity, [LV] = 3 x 10(5) L-V,L-., dSph galaxies studied here. We also note that the measured [Zn/Fe] abundance ratios for the dSph stars are lower than those of damped Ly alpha systems having low levels of dust depletion by roughly an order of magnitude. The first high-resolution abundance analysis for the distant Galactic globular cluster NGC 2419 is also presented. From a HIRES spectrum of a single red giant, we find a metallicity of [Fe/H] = -2.32 +/- 0.11 dex. This is slightly lower than, but still consistent with, published estimates based on low-resolution spectroscopy. With the possible exception of a slight enhancement in the abundances of some heavy elements such as Ce, Nd, Y, and Ba, the observed abundance pattern closely resembles those exhibited by red giants in M92: a nearby, well-studied globular cluster of nearly identical metallicity.