An Automated HR Diagram for NGC 6809 (M 55)

Abstract

For decades, star counts and HR diagrams extending below the main sequence turnoff in globular clusters meant the work of Sandage (1957). The advent of large CCD’s at the foci of large telescopes has changed this (McClure et al. 1985, Harris & Hesser 1985, Christian & Heasley 1986, Heasley et al. 1986, Penny & Dickens 1986, Richer & Fahlman 1986, Smith et al. 1986) and made clear that clusters differ in the shapes of their luminosity functions and in the morphology of their HR diagrams. We return here to photographic methods, which can capture an order of magnitude more images and so possibly reveal new details.