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J.-W. Lee, B. W. Carney (UNC), S. Balachandran (U. Maryland)
We present ground-based JHK photometry and high-resolution (\lambda/\Delta\lambda > 40,000) IR echelle spectroscopy of the inner halo cluster Palomar~6 (RGC = 0.8 kpc). We obtained spectra of two red giants in Palomar~6 and M71 (a control cluster) using the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. Our metallicity measurements for M71 giants are in good agreement with those of Sneden et al. (1994) who employed optical spectroscopy. Contrary to previous studies by Minniti (1995) and Bica et al. (1998), who claimed that Palomar~6 has a super- or near-solar metallicity, our results indicate that Palomar~6 is slightly metal-poor than M71, with [Fe/H] = -0.90. The slope of the red-giant branch from our (J-K, K) color magnitude diagram yields [Fe/H] = -0.91 using the calibration of Kuchinski et al. (1995).