Type II Cepheids

Unlike the recent findings that the photospheres of field RV Tau variables have been altered by a gas-dust separation process, none of these stars, except possibly V2 in M10, show such signs. We suggest that either a smaller carbon abundance in the photosphere of a globular cluster RV Tau star (compared to its field analogues) might be a factor in the gas-dust separation process due to the lack of sufficient carbon grain formation, or the stellar winds and their efficacy as dust-grain separators is influenced by the metallicity of the stellar envelope which, unlike the photosphere, is never subject to alteration by a dust-gas separation.

Our analysis is most complete for V84, for which we have estimated the abundances of 19 chemical elements. Compared to the other giants in M5, this star displays a very large excess of Na and a deficit of O. This finding is consistent with a recently proposed mechanism of Na production in the ON-cycling region of metal-poor RGB stars. The value of [Al/Fe] for V84 is also high (also consistent with ON-cycling), but a comparison with the other cluster giants cannot be performed until Al is measured in their spectra.