Interstellar Reddening Effect on the Age Dating of Population II Stars

Abstract

The age measurement of the stellar halo component of the Galaxy is based mainly on the comparison of the main sequence turn-off luminosity of the globular cluster (GC) stars with theoretical isochrones. The standard procedure includes a vertical shift, in order to account for the distance and extinction to the cluster, and a horizontal one, to compensate the reddening. However, the photometry is typically performed with broad-band filters where the shape of the stellar spectra introduces a shift of the effective wavelength response of the system, dependent on the effective temperature (or color index) of the star. The result is an increasing distortion—actually a rotation and a progressive compression with the temperature—of the color-magnitude diagrams relatively to the standard unreddened isochrones, with increasing reddening. This effect is usually negligible for reddening <mml:math display="inline"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">E</mml:mi> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">B</mml:mi> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">V</mml:mi> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> on the order of or smaller than 0.15, but it can be quite relevant at larger extinction values. While the ratio of the absorption to the reddening is widely discussed in the literature, the importance of the latter effect is often overlooked. In this contribution, we present isochron simulations and discuss the expected effects on age dating of high-reddening globular clusters.