ISOCAM observations of Galactic Globular Clusters: mass loss along the Red Giant Branch

Abstract

Deep images in the 10 micron spectral region have been obtained for five massive Galactic globular clusters, NGC 104 (=47 Tuc), NGC 362, NGC 5139 (omega Cen), NGC 6388, NGC 7078 (=M15) and NGC 6715 (=M54) in the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal using ISOCAM in 1997. A significant sample of bright giants have an ISOCAM counterpart but only < 20% of these have a strong mid-IR excess indicative of dusty circumstellar envelopes. From a combined physical and statistical analysis we derive mass loss rates and frequency. We find that i) significant mass loss occurs only at the very end of the Red Giant Branch evolutionary stage and is episodic, ii) the modulation timescales must be greater than a few decades and less than a million years, and iii) mass loss occurrence does not show a crucial dependence on the cluster metallicity.