Red Giant Branch Stars in Fornax with VLT/FLAMES

Abstract

The Fornax dSph is an interesting case as it contains five old globular clusters and its field stars, although predominantly of intermediate (3-8 Gyr old) age, cover a wide range of age and metallicity. Detailed abundance analysis is crucial to our understanding of the earliest star formation epoches, where classic CMD analysis fails to provide a unique answer. It also allows us to measure the chemical evolution of the stellar population following tracers of different enrichment mechanisms through time, e.g. SN type II (alpha elements); AGB stars (s-process elements) etc. With our large sample of abundance measurements we will obtain a detailed picture of the evolution of Fornax and of the role played by small galaxies in the building up of larger ones.