Ages and Chemical Abundances in Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies

Abstract

The dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) in the Local Group are excellent systems on which we can test theories of galaxy formation and evolution. Color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) containing many thousands of stars from the asymptotic giant branch to well below the oldest main-sequence turnoff are being used to infer their star-formation histories, and surprisingly complex evolutionary histories have been deduced. Spectroscopy of individual red giant stars in the dSphs is being used to determine the distribution of chemical abundances in them. By combining photometry and spectroscopy, we can overcome the age-metallicity degeneracy inherent in CMDs and determine the evolution of dSphs with unprecedented accuracy. We report on recent progress and discuss a new and exciting avenue of research, high-dispersion spectroscopy that yields abundances for numerous chemical elements. The later allows us to estimate the enrichment from both Type Ia and Type II supernovae (SNe) and places new limits on how much of the Galaxy could have been accreted in the form of dSph-sized fragments and when such mergers could have taken place.