ACS survey of galactic globular clusters

This Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Treasury project is designed to obtain photometry with S/N (signal-to-noise ratio) >~10 for main-sequence stars with masses >~0.2M_{sun}_ in a sample of globulars using the ACS Wide Field Channel. Here we focus on clusters without previous HST imaging data.

These include NGC 5466, NGC 6779, NGC 5053, NGC 6144, Palomar 2, E3, Lynga 7, Palomar 1, and NGC 6366. Our color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) extend reliably from the horizontal branch to as much as 7 mag fainter than the main-sequence turnoff and represent the deepest CMDs published to date for these clusters. Using fiducial sequences for three standard clusters (M92, NGC 6752, and 47 Tuc) with well-known metallicities and distances, we perform main-sequence fitting on the target clusters in order to obtain estimates of their distances and reddenings.