Precise reddening and metallicity of NGC6752 from FLAMES spectra

Abstract

(abridged) Accurate reddenings for Globular Clusters could be obtained by comparing the colour-temperature obtained using temperatures from reddening-free indicator (Halpha), with that given by standard colour-temperature calibrations. From a single 1300 seconds exposure with FLAMES at VLT2 we obtained spectra centred on Halpha (R=6000, 5<S/N<50) for 120 stars near the turn-off of NGC6752. This set of spectra was used to derive effective temperatures from fittings of Halpha profiles with typical errors of about +/- 200 K and reddening estimates with individual errors of 0.05 mag. Averaging all individual reddenings, a high precision reddening estimate has been obtained for the cluster: E(B-V)=0.046 +/- 0.005. The same exposure provided UVES spectra of seven stars near the red giant branch bump (R=40000, 20<S/N<40) that provided Fe abundances with internal errors of 0.026 dex, and with average metallicity [Fe/H]= -1.48 +/- 0.01 +/- 0.06 dex (random + systematic). Abundances were obtained for several other elements, allowing e.g. an accurate estimate of the ratio between the alpha-elements and Fe ([alpha/Fe]=+0.27 +/- 0.01). The O-Na anticorrelation is evident from our UVES data, in agreement with past results. This analysis shows the power of FLAMES for analysis of globular clusters: the accurate reddenings and metal abundances obtained by a procedure like that described here, combined with distance determinations from cluster dynamics or main sequence fitting, and high quality colour-magnitude diagrams, could allow derivation of ages with errors below 1 Gyr for individual globular clusters.