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Description
We present new Stromgren and Washington data sets for the Bootes I dwarf galaxy, and combine them with the available Sloan Digital Sky Survey photometry. The goal of this project is to refine a ground-based, practical, accurate method to determine age and metallicity for individual stars in Bootes I that can be selected in an unbiased imaging survey, without having to take spectra. With few bright upper red giant branch stars and distances of about 35-250kpc, the ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UDFs) present observational challenges in characterizing their stellar population. Other recent studies have produced spectra and proper motions, making Bootes I an ideal test case for our photometric methods. We produce photometric metallicities from Stromgren and Washington photometry, for stellar systems with a range of -1.0>[Fe/H]>-3.5. Needing to avoid the collapse of the metallicity sensitivity of the Stromgren m1-index on the lower red giant branch, we replace the Stromgren v filter with the broader Washington C filter to minimize observing time. We construct two indices: m*=(C-T1)0-(T1-T2)0 and m**=(C-b)0-(b-y)0. We find that CT1by is the most successful filter combination, for individual stars with [Fe/H] < -2.0, to maintain ~0.2dex [Fe/H]-resolution over the whole red giant branch. The m**-index would be the best choice for space-based observations because the (C-y) colour is not sufficient to fix metallicity alone in an understudied system. Our photometric metallicites of stars in the central regions of Bootes I confirm that there is a metallicity spread of at least -1.9>[Fe/H]>-3.7. The best-fitting Dartmouth isochrones give a mean age, for all the Bootes I stars in our data set, of 11.5+/-0.4Gyr. From ground-based telescopes, we show that the optimal filter combination is CT1by, avoiding the v filter entirely. We demonstrate that we can break the isochrones' age-metallicity degeneracy with the CT1by filters, using stars with logg=2.5-3.0, which have less than a 2percent change in their (C-T1) colour due to age, over a range of 10^-14^Gyr.
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