The HST Legacy Archival Uniform Reduction of Local Group Imaging (LAURELIN). I. Photometry and Star Formation Histories for 36 Ultra-faint Dwarf Galaxies
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866908510262919168 |
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| author | Durbin, Meredith J. Choi, Yumi Savino, Alessandro Weisz, Daniel Dolphin, Andrew E. Dalcanton, Julianne J. Jeon, Myoungwon Kallivayalil, Nitya Li, Ting S. Pace, Andrew B. Patel, Ekta Sacchi, Elena Skillman, Evan D. Sohn, Sangmo Tony van der Marel, Roeland P. Wetzel, Andrew Williams, Benjamin F. |
| author_facet | Durbin, Meredith J. Choi, Yumi Savino, Alessandro Weisz, Daniel Dolphin, Andrew E. Dalcanton, Julianne J. Jeon, Myoungwon Kallivayalil, Nitya Li, Ting S. Pace, Andrew B. Patel, Ekta Sacchi, Elena Skillman, Evan D. Sohn, Sangmo Tony van der Marel, Roeland P. Wetzel, Andrew Williams, Benjamin F. |
| contents | We present uniformly measured resolved stellar photometry and star formation histories (SFHs) for 36 nearby ($\lesssim$ 400 kpc) ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs; $-7.1 \le M_V \le +0.0$) from new and archival HST imaging. We measure homogeneous distances to all systems via isochrone fitting and find good agreement ($\le$ 2%) for the 18 UFDs that have literature RR Lyrae distances. From the ensemble of SFHs, we find: (i) an average quenching time (here defined as the lookback time by which 80% of the stellar mass formed, $τ_{80}$) of 12.48 $\pm$ 0.18 Gyr ago ($z = 4.6_{-0.5}^{+0.6}$), which is compatible with reionization-based quenching scenarios; and (ii) modest evidence of a delay ($\lesssim$ 800 Myr) in quenching times of UFDs thought to be satellites of the LMC or on their first infall, relative to long-term Galactic satellites, which is consistent with previous findings. We show that robust SFH measurement via the ancient main sequence turnoff (MSTO) requires a minimum effective luminosity (i.e., luminosity within the observed field of view) of $M_V \leq -2.5$, which corresponds to $\sim$100 stars around the MSTO. We also find that increasing the S/N above $\sim$100 at the MSTO does not improve SFH precision, which remains dominated by stochastic effects associated with the number of available stars. A main challenge driving the precision of UFD SFHs is limitations in the accuracy of foreground dust maps. We make all photometry catalogs public as the first data release of a larger HST archival program targeting all dwarf galaxies within $\sim$1.3 Mpc. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_18252 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | The HST Legacy Archival Uniform Reduction of Local Group Imaging (LAURELIN). I. Photometry and Star Formation Histories for 36 Ultra-faint Dwarf Galaxies Durbin, Meredith J. Choi, Yumi Savino, Alessandro Weisz, Daniel Dolphin, Andrew E. Dalcanton, Julianne J. Jeon, Myoungwon Kallivayalil, Nitya Li, Ting S. Pace, Andrew B. Patel, Ekta Sacchi, Elena Skillman, Evan D. Sohn, Sangmo Tony van der Marel, Roeland P. Wetzel, Andrew Williams, Benjamin F. Astrophysics of Galaxies We present uniformly measured resolved stellar photometry and star formation histories (SFHs) for 36 nearby ($\lesssim$ 400 kpc) ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs; $-7.1 \le M_V \le +0.0$) from new and archival HST imaging. We measure homogeneous distances to all systems via isochrone fitting and find good agreement ($\le$ 2%) for the 18 UFDs that have literature RR Lyrae distances. From the ensemble of SFHs, we find: (i) an average quenching time (here defined as the lookback time by which 80% of the stellar mass formed, $τ_{80}$) of 12.48 $\pm$ 0.18 Gyr ago ($z = 4.6_{-0.5}^{+0.6}$), which is compatible with reionization-based quenching scenarios; and (ii) modest evidence of a delay ($\lesssim$ 800 Myr) in quenching times of UFDs thought to be satellites of the LMC or on their first infall, relative to long-term Galactic satellites, which is consistent with previous findings. We show that robust SFH measurement via the ancient main sequence turnoff (MSTO) requires a minimum effective luminosity (i.e., luminosity within the observed field of view) of $M_V \leq -2.5$, which corresponds to $\sim$100 stars around the MSTO. We also find that increasing the S/N above $\sim$100 at the MSTO does not improve SFH precision, which remains dominated by stochastic effects associated with the number of available stars. A main challenge driving the precision of UFD SFHs is limitations in the accuracy of foreground dust maps. We make all photometry catalogs public as the first data release of a larger HST archival program targeting all dwarf galaxies within $\sim$1.3 Mpc. |
| title | The HST Legacy Archival Uniform Reduction of Local Group Imaging (LAURELIN). I. Photometry and Star Formation Histories for 36 Ultra-faint Dwarf Galaxies |
| topic | Astrophysics of Galaxies |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.18252 |