The Stellar Populations in the Outer Regions of M33. II. Deep ACS Imaging

Abstract

Studying the stellar populations in the outskirts of spiral galaxies can provide important constraints on their structure, formation, and evolution. To that end, we present VI photometry obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys for three fields located ~20'-30' in projected distance southeast of M33's nucleus (corresponding to approximately four to six visual scale lengths or ~9-13 kpc in deprojected radius). The color-magnitude diagrams reveal a mixed stellar population whose youngest constituents have ages no greater than ~100 Myr and whose oldest members have ages of at least several gigayears. The presence of stars as massive as 3-5 M⊙ is consistent with global star formation thresholds in disk galaxies but could argue for a threshold in M33 that is on the low end of observational and theoretical expectations. The metallicity gradient as inferred by comparing the observed red giant branch (RGB) to the Galactic globular clusters is consistent with M33's inner disk gradient traced by several other studies. The surface density of the RGB stars drops off exponentially with a radial scale length of 4.7' ± 0.1'. The scale length increases with age in a manner similar to the vertical scale height of several nearby late-type spirals. Based on the metallicity gradient, density gradient, and mixed nature of the stellar populations, we conclude that these fields are dominated by a disk population, although we cannot rule out the presence of a small halo component.