VI photometry near the M33 nucleus

The I vs (V-I) color-magnitude diagram reveals a young stellar population with a blue main sequence and red supergiants, and stars in a blue loop that are Cepheid candidates. An old red giant branch is clearly visible, with a break at I=20.7mag which is, within the observational errors, identical to the giant branch termination point of the Mould & Kristian (1986ApJ...305..591M) halo field.

However, red giants are seen up to I=19.5mag, and many bright red giants are undetected in the V band. We find evidence for a wide abundance spread of at least 1.5dex from metal-poor (~M15) to metal-rich (>=47Tucanae) in the Population II stars, in sharp contrast to the M33 halo field of Mould & Kristian (1986ApJ...305..591M) which is metal-poor (~M92) with a narrow abundance range. We show that the various stellar populations have different spatial distributions.