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M. Barczys, R. M. Rich (UCLA)
We present a stellar luminosity function derived from Keck Adaptive Optics (AO) imaging data of a Galactic Bulge field (l=1.18, b=-3.88) in Baade's Window. The near-infrared H-band images obtained with the NIRC2 instrument (Matthews et al.) on the Keck II telescope are diffraction-limited, and easily avoid the confusion limit. We reach nearly H=24 mag, producing the deepest ground- or space-based luminosity function to date in the Galactic Bulge, and reach near the expected end of the hydrogen burning main sequence. We compare our results to similar ones obtained by NICMOS on board HST (Zoccali et al. 2000), and find that the luminosity function is continuing to rise at even fainter magnitudes than those observed by NICMOS.
In addition, we present analysis of near-infrared observations of the Terzan 5 cluster. The stellar population for this cluster is well known, and we use it to model the selection effects inherent in our AO data for the observed Bulge field.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.