Journal article
The tidal remnant of an unusually metal-poor globular cluster
Zhen Wan, Geraint F Lewis, Ting S Li, Jeffrey D Simpson, Sarah L Martell, Daniel B Zucker, Jeremy R Mould, Denis Erkal, Andrew B Pace, Dougal Mackey, Alexander P Ji, Sergey E Koposov, Kyler Kuehn, Nora Shipp, Eduardo Balbinot, Joss Bland-Hawthorn, Andrew R Casey, Gary S Da Costa, Prajwal Kafle, Sanjib Sharma Show all
Nature | NATURE RESEARCH | Published : 2020
Abstract
Globular clusters are some of the oldest bound stellar structures observed in the Universe1. They are ubiquitous in large galaxies and are believed to trace intense star-formation events and the hierarchical build-up of structure2,3. Observations of globular clusters in the Milky Way, and a wide variety of other galaxies, have found evidence for a 'metallicity floor', whereby no globular clusters are found with chemical (metal) abundances below approximately 0.3 to 0.4 per cent of that of the Sun4-6. The existence of this metallicity floor may reflect a minimum mass and a maximum redshift for surviving globular clusters to form-both critical components for understanding the build-up of mass ..
View full abstract