IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v468y2010i7326d10.1038_nature09578.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A substantial population of low-mass stars in luminous elliptical galaxies

Author

Listed:
  • Pieter G. van Dokkum

    (Yale University)

  • Charlie Conroy

    (Princeton University
    Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

Abstract

The lesser lights of nearby galaxies The bulk of the stellar population is comprised of dwarf stars. This fact is reflected in the stellar initial mass function (IMF), which describes the mass distribution of stars at the time of their formation. The IMF is reasonably well constrained in the disk of the Milky Way, but we have little direct information on the IMF in other galaxies and at earlier cosmic epochs. Pieter van Dokkum and Charlie Conroy have now spectroscopically detected the signature of the many 'invisible' stars in the light of nearby elliptical galaxies by observing the Na I doublet and the Wing–Ford molecular FeH band, lines which are strong in stars with masses of less than a third that of the Sun. The data imply that these smaller stars account for more than 80% of the total number of stars and contribute more than 60% of total stellar mass in elliptical galaxies.

Suggested Citation

  • Pieter G. van Dokkum & Charlie Conroy, 2010. "A substantial population of low-mass stars in luminous elliptical galaxies," Nature, Nature, vol. 468(7326), pages 940-942, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:468:y:2010:i:7326:d:10.1038_nature09578
    DOI: 10.1038/nature09578
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09578
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature09578?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:468:y:2010:i:7326:d:10.1038_nature09578. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.