We present the photometric calibration of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The ACS was installed in the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in 2002 March. It comprises three cameras: the Wide Field Channel (WFC), optimized for deep near-IR survey imaging programs; the High Resolution Channel (HRC), a high-resolution imager that fully samples the HST point-spread function (PSF) in the visible; and the Solar Blind Channel (SBC), a far-UV imager. A significant amount of data has been collected to characterize the on-orbit performance of the three channels. We give here an overview of the performance and calibration of the two CCD cameras (WFC and HRC) and a description of the best techniques for reducing ACS CCD data. The overall performance is as expected from prelaunch testing of the camera. Surprises were a better-thanpredicted sensitivity in the visible and near-IR for both the WFC and HRC and an unpredicted dip in the HRC UV response at ∼3200 A ˚. On-orbit observations of spectrophotometric standard stars have been used to revise the prelaunch estimate of the instrument response curves to best match predicted and observed count rates. Synthetic photometry has been used to determine zero points for all filters in three magnitude systems and to derive interstellar extinction values for the ACS photometric systems. Due to the CCD internal scattering of longwavelength photons, the width of the PSF increases significantly in the near-IR, and the aperture correction for photometry with near-IR filters depends on the spectral energy distribution of the source. We provide a detailed recipe to correct for the latter effect. Transformations between the ACS photometric systems and the UBVRI and WFPC2 systems are presented. In general, two sets of transformations are available: one based on the observation of two star clusters; the other on synthetic photometry. We discuss the accuracy of these transformations and their sensitivity to details of the spectra being transformed. Initial signs of detector degradation due to the HST radiative environment are already visible. We discuss the impact on the data in terms of dark rate increase, charge transfer inefficiency, and "hot" pixel population.

We have studied the dissolution of initially mass segregated and unsegregated star clusters due to two-body relaxation in external tidal fields, using Aarseth's collisional N-body code NBODY4 on GRAPE6 special-purpose computers. When extrapolating results of initially not mass segregated models to globular clusters, we obtain a correlation between the time until destruction and the slope of the mass function, in the sense that globular clusters which are closer to dissolution are more strongly depleted in low-mass stars. This correlation fits observed mass functions of most globular clusters. The mass functions of several globular clusters are however more strongly depleted in low-mass stars than suggested by these models. Such strongly depleted mass functions can be explained if globular clusters started initially mass segregated. Primordial mass segregation also explains the correlation between the slope of the stellar mass function and the cluster concentration which was recently discovered by De Marchi et al. (2007). In this case, it is possible that all globular clusters started with a mass function similar to that seen in young open clusters in the present-day universe, at least for stars below m = 0.8 M ⊙ . This argues for a near universality of the mass function for different star formation environments and metallicities in the range −2 < [Fe/H] < 0. We finally describe a novel algorithm which can initialise stationary mass segregated clusters with arbitrary density profile and amount of mass segregation.

Using observations obtained with the Wide-Field Camera 3 on board the Hubble Space Telescope, we have studied the properties of the stellar populations in the central regions of 30 Dor in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The observations clearly reveal the presence of considerable differential extinction across the field. We characterize and quantify this effect using young massive main-sequence stars to derive a statistical reddening correction for most objects in the field. We then search for pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars by looking for objects with a strong (>4σ ) H α excess emission and find about 1150 of them over the entire field. Comparison of their location in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram with theoretical PMS evolutionary tracks for the appropriate metallicity reveals that about one-third of these objects are younger than ∼4 Myr, compatible with the age of the massive stars in the central ionizing cluster R 136, whereas the rest have ages up to ∼30 Myr, with a median age of ∼12 Myr. This indicates that star formation has proceeded over an extended period of time, although we cannot discriminate between an extended episode and a series of short and frequent bursts that are not resolved in time. While the younger PMS population preferentially occupies the central regions of the cluster, older PMS objects are more uniformly distributed across the field and are remarkably few at the very center of the cluster. We attribute this latter effect to photo-evaporation of the older circumstellar disks caused by the massive ionizing members of R 136.

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