Carbon and nitrogen abundances of stellar populations in the globular cluster M 2

Abstract

We present CH and CN index analysis and C and N abundance calculations based on the low-resolution blue spectra of red giant branch (RGB) stars in the Galactic globular cluster NGC 7089 (M2). Our main goal is to investigate the C-N anticorrelation for this intermediate metallicity cluster. The data were collected with DOLORES, the multiobject, low-resolution facility at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo. We first looked for CH and CN band strength variations and bimodalities in a sample of RGB stars with 17.5 ≤ V ≤ 14.5. Thus we derived C and N abundances under LTE assumption by comparing observed spectra with synthetic models from the spectral features at 4300 A (G-band) and at ∼3883 A (CN). Spectroscopic data were coupled with UV photometry obtained during the spectroscopic run. We found a considerable star-to-star variation in both A(C) and A(N) at all luminosities for our sample of 35 targets. These abundances appear to be anticorrelated, with a hint of bimodality in the C content for stars with luminosities below the RBG bump (V ∼ 15.7), while the range of variations in N abundances is very large and spans almost ∼2 dex. We find additional C depletion as the stars evolve off the RGB bump, in fairly good agreement with theoretical predictions for metal-poor stars in the course of normal stellar evolution. We isolated two groups with N-rich and N-poor stars and found that N abundance variations correlate with the (U-V) color in the DOLORES color.magnitude diagram (CMD). The V, (U-V) CMD for this cluster shows an additional RGB sequence, located at the red of the main RGB and amounting to a small fraction of the total giant population. We identified two CH stars detected in previous studies in our U, V images. These stars, which are both cluster members, fall on this redder sequence, suggesting that the anomalous RGB should have a peculiar chemical pattern. Unfortunately, no additional spectra were obtained for stars in this previously unknown RGB branch.