Recent Ph.D. graduate Justin Kader has published the first of three papers on globular clusters in the southern Galactic bulge. In this paper, Justin presents evidence for multiple stellar populations in 14 globular clusters. The photometric data Justin uses come from the Blanco DECam Bulge Survey, which is a deep, wide-field near-UV-near-IR (ugrizY) survey of the southern Galactic bulge. He takes advantage of BDBS’s deep photometry including the u band, which provides a crucial indicator of the abundance of carbon- and nitrogen-bearing molecules in stellar atmospheres. Justin finds evidence that all 14 clusters host at least two populations of stars, and NGC 6441, NGC 6626, and NGC 6656 appear to have at least three populations. The BDBS observations extend to much larger radial distances than similar HST observations, enabling a reliable estimate of the global fraction of first-generation stars in each cluster. Justin’s work demonstrates that ground-based u-band photometry as provided by DECam will prove powerful in the study of multiple populations in resolved GCs. The paper is published in the Astrophysical Journal. Congratulations, Justin!
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022ApJ...940...76K/abstract
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