The Faint, Optical Luminosity Function of the Ursa Minor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy: HST STIS Photometry

Abstract


We present the first faint, STIS luminosity function (LF) of a dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph), the Ursa Minor (UMi) dSph. We compare its LF to that of M15 (NGC~7078), a Galactic globular cluster which has a similar age and metallicity. The two LFs are found to be identical to the completeness limit of the STIS data, indicating that the initial mass functions of M15 and the UMi dSph are similar to masses as low as 0.4 solar masses.
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