The Small Blue Straggler Star Population in the Dense Galactic Globular Cluster NGC 6752**Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Also based on Wide Field Imager observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile, within the observing program 62.L-0354 and 64.L-0439.

Abstract

We used high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope (HST)-WFPC2 and wide-field ground-based observations to construct a catalog of blue straggler stars (BSSs) that spans the entire radial extent of the globular cluster NGC 6752. The BSS sample is the most extensive ever obtained for this cluster. Although NGC 6752 is a high-density cluster with a large binary population, we found that its BSS content is surprisingly low: the specific number of BSSs …