The Star Formation History of WLM from Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars and the Discovery of a Candidate Accreted System in its Outer Disk

We measure the star formation history (SFH) of Local Group dwarf galaxy Wolf–Lundmark–Melotte (WLM) using wide-area (∼4 half-light radii) ground-based near-infrared (NIR) imaging of bright (M_J < −4.9 mag) asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars. From our NIR color–magnitude diagram (CMD) of 825 stars, we find that our recovered SFH is in excellent agreement with literature SFHs of WLM measured from much deeper CMDs (M_F090W ∼ +4.3 mag) based on James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) imaging. Read More...