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S. V. Ramirez, K. Sellgren (OSU), J. S. Carr (NRL), S. Balachandran (U.Maryland), R. D. Blum (CTIO), D. M. Terndrup, A. Steed (OSU)
Measurements of [Fe/H] for ten M supergiant and giant stars within 30 pc of the Galactic Center (GC) are presented. The results are based on high-resolution (\lambda / \Delta \lambda = 40,000) K-band spectra, taken with CSHELL at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. The iron abundance is determined by detailed abundance analysis, performed with the spectral synthesis program MOOG. The mean [Fe/H] of the GC stars is determined to be near solar, [Fe/H] = +0.09 ± 0.09. Our analysis is a differential analysis, as we have observed and applied the same analysis technique to eleven nearby stars with similar temperatures and luminosities as the GC stars. The mean [Fe/H] of the nearby comparison stars, [Fe/H] = +0.03 ± 0.05, is similar to that of the GC stars. The GC width of the [Fe/H] distribution is found to be narrower than the width of the [Fe/H] distribution of Baade's Window in the bulge and consistent with the width of the [Fe/H] distribution of supergiant stars in the solar neighborhood.
This work has been supported by NSF grant AST-9619230 and NSF grant # GF-1003-97 from AURA under NSF cooperative agreement AST-8947990 and from Fundación Andes under project C-12984.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: solange@astronomy.ohio-state.edu