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Session 13 - Galaxies & Globular Clusters.
Oral session, Monday, June 09
North Main Hall F/G,
The blue straggler stars (BSS) in the globular cluster M3 (NGC 5272) have been well studied in recent years (Ferraro et al. 1997, 1993; Burgarella et al. 1995; Guhathakurta et al. 1994; and Bolte et al. 1993) in an attempt to understand their origin(s). The primary tools used in these investigations have been the radial distribution and luminosity function of the BSS. Measurements of each of these are subject to the effects of crowding and selection biases, especially in the core regions of clusters.
In an attempt to compensate for these effects, we have used artificial star experiments on new ground-based and archive HST data to simulate and correct for crowding-induced incompleteness and scattering of MSTO stars into the BSS 'region'. The combination of ground-based and HST fields give us essentially complete coverage of the cluster. We measure 45,000 M3 stars and count at least 110 BSS.
