Determining Chemical Homogeneity of the Open Cluster NGC 752 through High-Resolution Abundance Analysis

Abstract

Using high-resolution, high-signal-to-noise ratio Keck/HIRES spectra, we have derived the temperature and pressure structure, and elemental abundances of the atmosphere of six stars believed to be in the galactic open cluster NGC 752. Three of the stars are main-sequence dwarfs, and three are evolved red giant stars. We find the iron abundances to have an average value of [Fe=H] = -0:01 (on a scale where the Sun has an iron abundance of [Fe=H] = 0) with a standard deviation of 0.02 dex, providing evidence that the molecular cloud from which these stars formed was chemically homogeneous. We also derived the abundances of carbon, oxygen, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, and nickel to further demonstrate this claim. Additional derivation of the star’s nitrogen abundance will be performed, and an analysis of the abundances will be done by testing stellar nucleosynthesis models.