ULTRA-DEEP GEMINI NEAR-INFRARED OBSERVATIONS OF THE BULGE GLOBULAR CLUSTER NGC 6624*

Abstract

We used ultra-deep J and K s images secured with the near-infrared (NIR) GSAOI camera assisted by the multi-conjugate adaptive optics system GeMS at the GEMINI South Telescope in Chile, to obtain a ( K s , J − K s ) color–magnitude diagram (CMD) for the bulge globular cluster NGC 6624. We obtained the deepest and most accurate NIR CMD from the ground for this cluster, by reaching K s  ∼ 21.5, approximately 8 mag below the horizontal branch level. The entire extension of the Main Sequence (MS) is nicely sampled and at K s  ∼ 20 we detected the so-called MS “knee” in a purely NIR CMD. By taking advantage of the exquisite quality of the data, we estimated the absolute age of NGC 6624 ( t age  = 12.0 ± 0.5 Gyr), which turns out to be in good agreement with previous studies in the literature. We also analyzed the luminosity and mass functions of MS stars down to M ∼ 0.45 M ⊙ , finding evidence of a significant increase of low-mass stars at increasing distances from the cluster center. This is a clear signature of mass segregation, confirming that NGC 6624 is in an advanced stage of dynamical evolution.