Discovery of Carbon/Oxygen-depleted Blue Straggler Stars in 47 Tucanae: The Chemical Signature of a Mass Transfer Formation Process

2006/08/08 by F. R. Ferraro, Elena Sabbi, E. Sabbi +13 · 3 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Algorithm #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Blue straggler #Carbon fibers #Chemistry #Chromatography #Computer science #Globular cluster #Mass transfer #Physics #Process (computing) #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/507327

published as Astrophys.J.647:L53-L56,2006 · Published on 2006, August 10, in ApJ 647, L53

openalex publication_date 2006/08/08 · arxiv created 2006/10/03 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We use high-resolution spectra obtained with the ESO Very Large Telescope to measure surface abundance patterns of 43 Blue Stragglers stars (BSS) in 47 Tuc. We discovered that a sub-population of BSS shows a significant depletion of Carbon and Oxygen with respect to the dominant population. This evidence would suggest the presence of CNO burning products on the BSS surface coming from a deeply peeled parent star, as expected in the case of mass-transfer process. This is the first detection of a chemical signature clearly pointing to a specific BSS formation process in a globular cluster.

Citations

• A Catalog of Parameters for Globular Clusters in the Milky Way
• Blue Straggler Stars: A Direct Comparison of Star Counts and Population Ratios in Six Galactic Globular Clusters
• Abundances of C, N, O in slightly evolved stars in the globular clusters NGC 6397, NGC 6752 and 47 Tuc

Cited by

• Discovery of Extended Main-sequence Turnoffs in Four Young Massive Clusters in the Magellanic Clouds
• A Population of Binaries in the Asymptotic Giant Branch of 47 Tucanae?
• The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. XV. The Dynamical Clock: Reading Cluster Dynamical Evolution from the Segregation Level of Blue Straggler Stars