# WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The Ursa Minor (UMi) dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy was independently discovered by Wilson (wilson1955 (1955)) and Hubble. Ursa Minor is the second closest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way at a distance of $`69\pm 4`$ kpc ($``$220,000 light years) from the Sun. Color-magnitude diagrams of the brightest stars of this faint ($`M_V8.9`$ mag: Kleyna et al. kleyna\_etal\_1998 (1998)) small ($`r_{\mathrm{tidal}}=628\pm 74`$ pc: Irwin & Hatzidimitriou irha1995 (1995)) galaxy feature a strong blue horizontal branch (e.g., van Agt vanagt1967 (1967); Cudworth, Olszewski, & Schommer cuolsc1986 (1986); Kleyna, et al. kleyna\_etal\_1998 (1998)) — a unique horizontal branch morphology amongst the nine Galactic dSph satellite galaxies. The deep $`BV`$ CCD observations of Olszewski & Aaronson (olaa1985 (1985)) indicate that Ursa Minor has an age and abundance very similar to that of the ancient metal-poor Galactic globular cluster M92 (NGC 6341). Ursa Minor may be the only dwarf galaxy in the Local Group which is composed exclusively of stars older than 10 Gyr (Mateo mateo1998 (1998)).

In this work we investigate the star formation history of the Ursa Minor spheroidal galaxy using archival Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 data. Section 2 is a discussion of the observations and photometric reductions. We present and compare our results with previous work in Sec. 3. The paper is summarized in Sec. 4. Appendix A describes a new robust algorithm for the computation of of fiducial sequences from high-quality stellar photometry.

## 2 OBSERVATIONS AND PHOTOMETRY

The Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy was observed with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on 1995 July 4 through the F555W ($``$$`V`$) and F814W ($``$$`I`$) filters. The WFPC2 WFALL aperture (Biretta et al. biet1996 (1996)) was centered on the target position given in Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  and shown in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. . Two low-gain observations were obtained in each filter. These observations were secured as part of the HST Cycle 5 program GTO/WFC 6282 (PI: Westphal) and were placed in the public data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute on 1996 July 5. The datasets were recalibrated at the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre and retrieved electronically by us using a guest account which was kindly established for KJM.

These WFPC2 observations contain several types of image defects. Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  shows a negative mosaic image of the U2PB0103T dataset. Besides exhibiting normal cosmic ray damage, this 1100-s F555W exposure also shows (1) a satellite trail on the WF4 CCD, (2) an elevated background near the inner corner of the PC1 CCD, and (3) shadows are seen on all four CCDs. The elevated background near the inner-corner of the PC1 CCD is probably due to stray light patterns from a bright star just outside of the PC1 field-of-view (cf. Fig. 7.1.a of Biretta, Ritchie, & Rudloff biet1995 (1995)). The shadows seen on all four CCDs are indicative of a serious problem with these observations because the shadows are generally seen against an elevated background throughout the entire WFPC2 field-of-view. This phenomenon is due to light from the bright sun-lit Earth reflecting off the optical telescope assembly (OTA) baffles and the secondary mirror supports (“spider”) and into the WFPC2 instrument. Elevated backgrounds occur when the angle between the Earth and the OTA axis is $`<`$25 degrees (cf. Fig. 11.2.a of Biretta et al. biet1995 (1995)). The background “sky” brightened significantly during the course of these observations (see Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. ) indicating that the Hubble Space Telescope experienced earthrise during these WFPC2 observations of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy.

The experimental design of these WFPC2 observations was nearly identical to that of the Carina dwarf spheroidal program GTO/WFC 5637 (PI: Westphal) which was analyzed by Mighell (mighell1997 (1997)). We therefore planned to follow Mighell’s Carina photometric reduction procedures in this investigation of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal. Unfortunately, the standard cosmic-ray removal procedure failed spectacularly due to earthrise causing the background sky level to change rapidly. We had to improvise more complicated analysis techniques than ones used by Mighell in his Carina study in order to obtain stellar photometry of comparable quality.

We found stellar candidates on cosmic-ray cleaned images which were suitable for the detection of point sources but unsuitable for further photometric analysis. The cosmic rays were removed by using the crrej task of the iraf stsdas.hst\_calib.wfpc package with the sky subtraction parameter set to sky=mode instead of the default value of sky=none — this unusual option was required because the sky levels of the observations did not scale with exposure time. We used crrej to make a clean F555W observation of 2100 s from the U2PB0102T and U2PB0103T datasets and a clean F814W observation of 2300 s from the U2PB0105T and U2PB0106T datasets. Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  shows that this procedure repaired most of the cosmic-ray damage seen in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. . This procedure is clearly not perfect since traces of the satellite trial are still visible. The sky=mode option produces cosmic-ray cleaned images with modal pixel values near zero. Many background pixels will thus have negative values which implies negative background-flux values. Such physically unrealistic background data values are quite rightly rejected by many standard CCD stellar photometry packages.

Unsharp mask images of the clean F555W and F814W observations were made using the lpd (low-pass difference) digital filter which was designed by Mighell to optimize the detection of faint stars in HST WF/PC and WFPC2 images (Appendix A of Mighell & Rich miri1995 (1995), and references therein). The F555W unsharp mask image (see Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. ) and the F814W unsharp mask image were then added together to create a master unsharp mask image of each WF CCD. A simple peak detector algorithm was then used on the master unsharp images to create a list of point source candidates with coordinates $`60x790`$ and $`60y790`$ on each WF CCD. This allowed the use of almost the entire field-of-view of each WF camera while avoiding edge-effects in the outer regions. We only present the analysis of data obtained from the WF cameras in this paper.

The data were analyzed with the ccdcap<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1 IRAF implementations of ccdcap are now available over the Wide World Web at the following site: http://www.noao.edu/staff/mighell/ccdcap/  digital circular aperture photometry code developed by Mighell to analyze HST WFPC2 observations (Mighell et al. mighell1997 (1997), and references therein). A fixed aperture with a radius of 2.5 pixels was used for all stars on the WF CCDs. The local background level was determined from a robust estimate of the mean intensity value of all pixels between 2.5 and 6.0 pixels from the center of the circular stellar aperture. Point source candidates were rejected if either (1) the measured signal-to-noise ratio of either instrumental magnitude was SNR$`<`$10 ; or (2) the center of the aperture \[which was allowed to move in order to maximize the SNR \] changed by more than 1.8 pixels from its detected position on the master unsharp mask. The Charge Transfer Effect was removed from the instrumental magnitudes by using a 4% uniform wedge along the Y-axis of each CCD as described in Holtzman et al. (1995b ). We used the standard WFPC2 magnitude system (Holtzman et al. 1995b ) which is defined using 1″ diameter apertures. We measured the stars with a smaller aperture (0.5″ diameter) in order to optimize the measured stellar signal-to-noise ratios; usage of 1″ diameter apertures resulted in significantly poorer photometry for the faint stars. The instrumental magnitudes, $`v_r`$ and $`i_r`$, were transformed to Johnson $`V`$ and Cousins $`I`$ magnitudes using the following equations $`V=v_r+\mathrm{\Delta }_r+\delta _r+[0.052\pm 0.007](VI)+[0.027\pm 0.002](VI)^2+[21.725\pm 0.005]`$ and $`I=i_r+\mathrm{\Delta }_r+\delta _r+[0.062\pm 0.009](VI)+[0.025\pm 0.002](VI)^2+[20.839\pm 0.006]`$ where an instrumental magnitude of zero is defined as one DN s<sup>-1</sup> at the high gain state ($``$14 e<sup>-</sup> DN<sup>-1</sup> ). The constants come from Table 7 of Holtzman et al. (1995b ). The values for average aperture corrections<sup>2</sup><sup>2</sup>2 Observed WFPC2 point spread functions (PSFs) vary significantly with wavelength, field position, and time (Holtzman et al. 1995a ). There were not enough bright isolated stars in these WFPC2 observations to adequately measure the variation of the point spread function across each WF CCD using the observations themselves. We measured artificial point spread functions synthesized by the tiny tim version 4.4 software package (Krist kr1993 (1993), Krist & Hook krho1997 (1997)) to determine the aperture corrections, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_r`$, required to convert instrumental magnitudes measured with an aperture of radius 2.5 pixels to a standard aperture of radius 5.0 pixels (1″ diameter). A catalog of 289 synthetic point spread functions of a G-type star was created with a $`17\times 17`$ square grid for each filter (F555W and F814W) and CCD (WF2, WF3, and WF4). The spatial resolution of one synthetic PSF every 50 pixels in $`x`$ and $`y`$ allowed for the determination of aperture corrections for any star in the entire WFPC2 field-of-view to have a spatial resolution of $``$35 pixels.  , $`\mathrm{\Delta }_r`$, for each filter/CCD combination are listed in Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. . The zero-order (“breathing”) aperture corrections<sup>3</sup><sup>3</sup>3 Spacecraft jitter during exposures and small focus changes caused by the HST expanding and contracting (“breathing”) once every orbit are another two important causes of variability in observed WFPC2 point spread functions. These temporal variations of WFPC2 PSFs can cause small, but significant, systematic offsets in the photometric zeropoints when small apertures are used. Fortunately, these systematic offsets can be easily calibrated away by simply measuring bright isolated stars on each CCD twice: once with the small aperture and again with a larger aperture. The robust mean magnitude difference between the large and small apertures is then the zero-order aperture correction, $`\delta _r`$, for the small aperture which, by definition, can be positive or negative. Zero-order aperture corrections are generally small for long exposures, however, they can be quite large for short exposures that were obtained while the WFPC2 was slightly out of focus (by a few microns) due to the expansion/contraction of the HST during its normal breathing cycle.  for these observations ($`\delta _r`$ : see Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. ) were computed using a large aperture with a radius of 3.5 pixels and a background annulus of $`3.5r_{\mathrm{sky}}7.0`$ pixels.

Two ($`V,I`$) datasets pairs, (U2PB0102T, U2PB0105T) and (U2PB0103T, U2PB0106T), were reduced independently using ccdcap and the resulting instrumental magnitudes were transformed to Johnson $`V`$ and Cousins $`I`$ magnitudes. We determined which objects probably had acceptable photometry from these independent measurements. The $`V`$ measurements of a star, $`V_1`$ \[$``$ (U2PB0102T, U2PB0105T) \] and $`V_2`$ \[$``$ (U2PB0103T, U2PB0106T) \] , with photometric errors, $`\sigma _{V_1}`$ and $`\sigma _{V_2}`$, were determined to be acceptable if the following condition was true: $`|V_1V_2|\mathrm{max}(\left[3\sqrt{2}\mathrm{min}(\sigma _{V_1},\sigma _{V_2})\right],0.06)`$ . If the condition was satisfied, we then adopted the quantity, $`\mathrm{max}(V_1,V_2)2.5\mathrm{log}\left[(1+\left\{10^{0.4}\right\}^{|V_1V_2|})/2\right]`$, as the $`V`$ magnitude of the star and adopted the quantity, $`\sqrt{(\sigma _{V_1}^2+\sigma _{V_2}^2)/2}`$, as a conservative estimate of its $`V`$ photometric error, $`\sigma _V`$. We assumed that cosmic rays would be the primary cause of poor photometry and therefore adopted the photometry of the faintest measurement of the star whenever the acceptability condition failed. The adopted $`I`$ magnitude and $`I`$ photometric error, $`\sigma _I`$, was determined from both $`I`$ measurements, $`I_1`$ \[$``$ (U2PB0102T, U2PB0105T) \] and $`I_2`$ \[$``$ (U2PB0103T, U2PB0106T) \] , in an analogous manner. Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  shows the outlier measurements we have identified in this manner. Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  gives our preliminary $`V`$ versus $`VI`$ color-magnitude diagram CMD of the observed stellar field in Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy.

We present our WFPC2 stellar photometry of 696 stars in the central region of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy in Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. . The first column gives the identification (ID) of the star. The second and third columns give the $`V`$ magnitude and its rms ($`1\sigma `$) photometric error $`\sigma _V`$. Likewise, the fourth and fifth columns give the $`VI`$ color and its rms ($`1\sigma `$) photometric error $`\sigma _{(VI)}`$. The sixth column gives the quality flag value of the star. We only present photometry of stars with signal-to-noise ratios SNR$``$10 in both the F555W and F814W filters.

## 3 DISCUSSION

### 3.1 Color-Magnitude Diagram

The $`V`$ versus $`VI`$ color-magnitude diagram of the observed stellar field in Ursa Minor is shown in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. . This CMD features a sparsely populated blue horizontal branch, a steep thin red giant branch, and a narrow subgiant branch. The main sequence reaches $``$2 magnitudes below the turnoff of the main stellar population of the Ursa Minor galaxy.

Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  shows a small amount of foreground contamination by foreground stars in our Galaxy. Ratnatunga & Bahcall (ratnatunga\_bahcall\_1985 (1985)) used the Bahcall and Soneira Galaxy model (Bahcall & Soneira bahcall\_soneira\_1980 (1980), bahcall\_soneira\_1984 (1980); Bahcall et al. bahcall\_etal\_1985 (1980)) to predict that 2.3 foreground stars brighter than $`V=25`$ mag would be found in one square arcmin in the direction of Ursa Minor. Our observation surveys 4.44 arcmin<sup>2</sup> of Ursa Minor and we would therefore expect, from the prediction of Ratnatunga and Bahcall, to find $``$10 foreground stars brighter than $`V=25`$ mag in our color-magnitude diagrams. A direct check with observations is provided by Figure 2 of Kleyna et al. (kleyna\_etal\_1998 (1998)) which indicates that while foreground contamination towards Ursa Minor is small it can not be ignored. The 4 bright blue stars near $`V20`$ mag with colors $`(VI)<0.3`$ mag will be shown below to be probable Ursa Minor horizontal branch stars. There are a few fainter blue stars seen in Fig. WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  which are within $`<`$2 magnitudes of the main-sequence turnoff of the main Ursa Minor stellar population. Determining whether these “blue stragglers” are actually members of the Ursa Minor galaxy or are simply Galactic foreground stars is beyond the scope of this paper.

### 3.2 Fiducial Sequence

The robust median $`VI`$ color as a function of $`V`$ magnitude of the Ursa Minor main sequence, subgiant branch, and base of the red giant branch ($`21.5V25.0`$ mag) is listed in Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  and shown in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. . The robust median $`VI`$ color of a given $`\mathrm{\Delta }V=0.2`$ mag data subsample was determined after $`>`$2.4$`\sigma `$ outliers were iteratively rejected in 5 iterations of a robust fiducial sequence algorithm (see Appendix A) recently developed by Mighell. The data in Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  is given in intervals of $`\mathrm{\Delta }V=0.1`$ mag. Since a sampling of $`\mathrm{\Delta }V=0.2`$ was used to determine the robust median $`VI`$ colors, we see that there are actually two realizations of the Ursa Minor fiducial sequence given in Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  since only every other row in that table represents an independent measurement of the true Ursa Minor fiducial sequence. The first fiducial sequence is given at $`V_{\mathrm{UMi}}=21.6,21.8,\mathrm{},24.8`$ mag in Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  and is shown with open diamonds in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. . The second fiducial sequence is given at $`V_{\mathrm{UMi}}=21.7,21.9,\mathrm{},24.9`$ mag in Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  and is shown with open squares in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. .

We compare the Ursa Minor fiducial sequences (Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. ) with those of the ancient metal-poor Galactic globular cluster M92 (Table A1 in Appendix A) in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. . We get an excellent fit of the Ursa Minor fiducial sequences to the M92 fiducial sequences when we make the M92 fiducial sequence fainter by $`\mathrm{\Delta }V=4.60`$ mag and add a small color offset of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)=0.01`$ mag. We show below that the fit is so good that these fiducials are statistically equivalent over a 3 magnitude range ($`22.0V_{\mathrm{UMi}}<25.0`$ mag) from the base of the red giant branch of Ursa Minor to $``$1.7 magnitudes below its main-sequence turnoff. This suggests that the ancient metal-poor Galactic globular cluster M92 is an excellent stellar population analog for the median stellar population of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy. It would not be surprising if the M92 analogy weakens sometime in the future when deeper observations with smaller photometric scatter are analyzed — especially if these future observations survey a significantly larger fraction of the Ursa Minor galaxy.

### 3.3 $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}`$

The $`V`$ magnitude offset, $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}`$, and the color offset, $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}`$, between the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy and the Galactic globular cluster M92 may be determined by comparing our fiducial sequences of Ursa Minor (Table 5) and M92 (Table A1). The parameter space may be investigated through the application of the following chi-square statistics:

$$\chi _{22.2}^2\underset{j=1}{\overset{14}{}}\frac{\left[(VI)\text{UMi}(V_j)(VI)^{}\text{M92}(V_j\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}})\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}\right]^2}{\left[\sigma \text{UMi}(V_j)\right]^2+\left[\sigma ^{}\text{M92}(V_j\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}})\right]^2}$$
(1)   
where $`V_j22.0+0.2j`$ mag and

$$\chi _{22.1}^2\underset{k=1}{\overset{15}{}}\frac{\left[(VI)\text{UMi}(V_k)(VI)^{}\text{M92}(V_k\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}})\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}\right]^2}{\left[\sigma \text{UMi}(V_k)\right]^2+\left[\sigma ^{}\text{M92}(V_k\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}})\right]^2}$$
(2)   
where $`V_k21.9+0.2k`$ mag. The color errors are approximated as

$$\sigma \frac{1.25\mathrm{adev}}{\sqrt{n}}$$
(3)   
where adev is the average deviation (column 3 of Tables 5 and A1) and $`n`$ is the number of stars in the subsample (column 6 of Tables 5 and A1). We use cubic spline interpolations wherever the M92 fiducial sequence (Table A1) does not have a tabulated value at $`V`$ magnitude values of $`V_j\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}`$ mag and $`V_k\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}`$ mag. Usage of cubic spline interpolations is denoted by prime superscripts over the appropriate terms in the definitions of these chi-square statistics.

We now use these chi-square statistics to determine the $`V`$ magnitude and $`VI`$ color offset between Ursa Minor and M92. Tables WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  and WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  give the reduced chi-square values $`\chi _{22.2}^2/14`$ and $`\chi _{22.1}^2/15`$, respectively, using $`V`$ magnitude offsets of $`4.400\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}4.800`$ mag and color offsets of $`\text{-0.010}\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}0.030`$ mag. The residuals of individual fits (see footnotes a–i in Tables WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  and WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. ) are shown in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. .

Tables WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  and WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  indicate that a color offset of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=\text{+0.010}`$ mag always produces the lowest reduced chi-square value — at any given $`V`$ magnitude offset. This is clearly seen in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. . The residuals systematically become more negative as the color offset is increased from -0.01 to +0.03 mag; the residual scatter is minimized (the best fits occur) at +0.01 mag. We have thus established that the color offset between Ursa Minor and M92 is approximately +0.01 mag.

The top-center panel of Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  shows that a $`V`$ magnitude offset of $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=4.5`$ mag and a $`VI`$ color offset of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=\text{+0.010}`$ mag gives systematically large positive residuals in the range $`22V<23`$ mag. This poor fit in the subgiant branch region of Ursa Minor indicates that the UMi SGB is systematically fainter  than the shifted M92 SGB. We have thus established a lower limit of the $`V`$ magnitude offset between Ursa Minor and M92: $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}>4.5`$ mag.

The bottom-center panel of Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  shows that using offsets of $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=4.7`$ mag and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=\text{+0.010}`$ mag gives systematically large negative residuals in the range $`22V<23`$ mag. This poor fit in the subgiant branch region of Ursa Minor indicates that the UMi SGB is systematically brighter than the shifted M92 SGB. We have thus established an upper limit of the $`V`$ magnitude offset between Ursa Minor and M92: $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}<4.7`$ mag.

The 90%, 95%, and 99% confidence limits ($`\chi _{22.2}^2/14`$: 1.50, 1.69, and 2.08) of the fits given in Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  are shown in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. . Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  shows that fits assuming a $`V`$ magnitude offset of $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=\text{4.575}`$ mag produce the smallest reduced chi-square value for any given $`VI`$ color offset. This is clearly seen in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  where the confidence contours are widest at the same $`V`$ magnitude offset.

The 90%, 95%, and 99% confidence limits ($`\chi _{22.1}^2/15`$: 1.48, 1.66, and 2.04) of the fits given in Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  are shown in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. . Table WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  shows that fits assuming a $`V`$ magnitude offset of $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=\text{4.625}`$ mag produce the smallest reduced chi-square value for any given $`VI`$ color offset. This is clearly seen in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  where the confidence contours are widest at the same $`V`$ magnitude offset.

A conservative analysis of Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  yields a determination that the $`V`$ magnitude offset for the Ursa Minor dSph galaxy from the Galactic globular cluster M92 is $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=4.60\pm 0.03`$ mag with 99% confidence limits of $`4.500\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}4.700`$ mag. Similarly, a conservative estimate of the $`VI`$ color offset between Ursa Minor and M92 is $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=0.010\pm 0.005`$ mag with 99% confidence limits of $`0.005\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}0.020`$ mag.

Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  shows our Ursa Minor color-magnitude diagram with the addition of the M92 fiducial sequence of Johnson & Bolte (jobo1998 (1998)) which has been plotted with a $`V`$ magnitude offset of 4.6 mag and a $`VI`$ color offset of 0.01 mag. We see that the 4 bright blue stars near $`V20`$ mag with colors $`(VI)<0.3`$ mag lie underneath the shifted M92 blue horizontal branch; these stars are probable Ursa Minor horizontal branch stars. The brighter part of the Ursa Minor red giant branch ($`V<22`$ mag – where our fiducials were not compared) is seen to be slightly redder than the M92 red giant branch. This could be evidence that Ursa Minor is slightly more metal-rich than M92 — however we caution the reader not to over-interpret such a small sample of Ursa Minor red giants. The current observations can not rule out that the main stellar population of Ursa Minor has the same metallicity as M92.

### 3.4 Distance, Reddening, and Age of UMi

With an accurate estimate of $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}`$ in hand, we are now able to determine the apparent $`V`$ distance modulus of the Ursa Minor dSph galaxy if we know the apparent $`V`$ distance modulus of M92: $`(mM)_V^{\mathrm{UMi}}(mM)_V^{\mathrm{M92}}+\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}`$. The above analysis suggests that the uncertainty in the the $`V`$ magnitude offset between Ursa Minor and M92 is small ($``$0.03 mag). This implies that the largest source of uncertainty in the value of $`(mM)_V^{\mathrm{UMi}}`$ will probably be the error associated with apparent $`V`$ distance modulus of M92 itself. Pont et al. (poet1998 (1998)) recently estimated $`(mM)_V^{\mathrm{M92}}=14.67\pm 0.08`$ mag from their analysis of Hipparcos subdwarf parallaxes. A conservative estimate of the apparent $`V`$ distance modulus of the Ursa Minor dSph is then $`(mM)_V^{\mathrm{UMi}}=(14.67+4.60)\pm (0.08+0.03)=19.27\pm 0.11`$ mag.

Let us now assume that the $`VI`$ color offset between M92 and Ursa Minor is completely due to reddening. The difference in $`BV`$ reddening between M92 and Ursa Minor would then be $`\mathrm{\Delta }E(BV)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}/1.3=0.008\pm 0.004`$ mag assuming that $`E(VI)1.3E(BV)`$ (Dean, Warren, & Cousins dean\_warren\_cousins\_1978 (1978)). Adopting a $`BV`$ reddening for M92, $`E(BV)_{\mathrm{M92}}=0.02\pm 0.01`$ mag (e.g., Stetson & Harris stha1988 (1988), Bolte & Hogan bolte\_hogan\_1995 (1995)), we now determine the $`BV`$ reddening for Ursa Minor to be $`E(BV)_{\mathrm{UMi}}=E(BV)_{\mathrm{M92}}+\mathrm{\Delta }E(BV)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=0.03\pm 0.01`$ mag. The absorption in V is determined to be $`A_V^{\mathrm{UMi}}=0.09\pm 0.03`$ assuming that $`A_V=3.1E(BV)`$ (Savage & Mathis sama1979 (1979)). Our new $`BV`$ reddening estimate for UMi agrees well with previous estimates in the literature: 0.03 mag (Zinn zi1981 (1981)) and $`0.02_{0.02}^{+0.03}`$ mag (Nemec, Wehlau, & de Oliveira neet1988 (1988)).

Reddening estimates based on COBE/DIRBE and IRAS/ISSA data give $`E(BV)`$ values of 0.023$`\pm `$0.003 mag and 0.033$`\pm `$0.004 mag at the respective positions of the Ursa Minor<sup>4</sup><sup>4</sup>4 Estimate derived at the Galactic longitude and latitude of $`(\mathrm{l},\mathrm{b})_{\mathrm{UMi}}=(105\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}00,44\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}85)`$.  dwarf spheroidal galaxy and the Galactic globular cluster M92<sup>5</sup><sup>5</sup>5 Estimate derived at the Galactic longitude and latitude of $`(\mathrm{l},\mathrm{b})_{\mathrm{M92}}=(68\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}34,34\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}86)`$.  (Schlegel et al. schlegel\_etal\_1998 (1998)). The difference between these two values, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{E}(BV)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=0.010\pm 0.005`$ mag, agrees well with our own estimate of the difference in $`BV`$ reddening ($`0.008\pm 0.004`$ mag) which we determined above with a completely different method (fiducial-sequence fitting).

King et al. (king\_etal\_1998 (1998)) recently suggested that the $`BV`$ reddening of M92 may be $`0.04`$$`0.05`$ mag greater than canonical values: $`\mathrm{E}(BV)_{\mathrm{M92}}=0.06`$$`0.07`$ mag. Reid & Gizis (reid\_gizis\_1998 (1998)) observed that the standard $`BV`$ reddening estimate of M92, $`E(BV)_{\mathrm{M92}}=0.02`$ mag, is confirmed by Schlegel et al. (see above paragraph); they also note that high reddening estimate of King et al. is at odds with other studies. Our determination of the $`BV`$ reddening difference between UMi and M92 could be consistent with the high reddening estimate of King et al. only if the $`BV`$ reddening of UMi is also $`0.04`$$`0.05`$ greater than canonical values. Thus while it is true that reddening is patchy across the sky, it is rather unlikely that both M92 and UMi have exactly the same amount of extra reddening beyond that predicted from maps of infrared dust emission. We have thus adopted the traditional $`BV`$ reddening estimate for M92 for the sake of consistency with Schlegel et al. (schlegel\_etal\_1998 (1998)) and older studies of Galactic extinction (e.g., Burstein & Heiles buhe1982 (1982)).

We calculate the distance modulus of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy to be $`(mM)_0^{\mathrm{UMi}}=19.18\pm 0.12`$ based on $`(mM)_V^{\mathrm{M92}}=14.67\pm 0.08`$ mag (Pont et al. poet1998 (1998)) which was derived assuming $`\text{E}(BV)_{\mathrm{M92}}=0.02`$ mag and $`\text{[Fe/H]}_{\mathrm{M92}}=2.2`$ dex (cf. Caretta & Gratton cagr1997 (1997), Zinn & West ziwe1984 (1984)). Decreasing the adopted $`BV`$ reddening for M92 by 0.01 mag decreases the distance modulus estimate by 0.02 mag and increasing the metallicity for M92 by 0.1 dex increases the distance modulus by 0.03 mag (Pont et al. poet1998 (1998)).

Our new distance estimate for Ursa Minor is in good agreement with previous determinations based on early CCD observations in the 1980’s once earlier estimates are placed on the same distance scale. For example, Cudworth, Olszewski, & Schommer (cuolsc1986 (1986)) derived a distance modulus for Ursa Minor, $`(mM)_0^{\mathrm{UMi}}=19.0\pm 0.1`$ mag, based on a sliding fit to M92. They also got the same value from their measurement of the V magnitude of the horizontal branch at the RR Lyrae gap, $`V_{\mathrm{RR}}=19.7`$ mag, their absorption value, $`A_V^{\mathrm{UMi}}=0.1`$ mag, and the assumption that the absolute $`V`$ magnitude of the RR Lyraes is $`M_V^{\mathrm{RR}}=0.6`$ mag. Harris (harris\_1996 (1996)) gives the $`V`$ magnitude of the horizontal branch of M92 as $`V_{\mathrm{HB}}^{\mathrm{M92}}=15.10`$ mag. With our $`V`$ magnitude offset value between Ursa Minor and M92, we expect that the $`V`$ magnitude of the Ursa Minor horizontal is $`V_{\mathrm{HB}}^{\mathrm{UMi}}=19.70\pm 0.03`$ mag which exactly agrees with the measurement of Cudworth et al. (cuolsc1986 (1986)). Our distance modulus estimate for Ursa Minor implies that the absolute visual magnitude of the horizontal branch (at a metallicity of $`\text{[Fe/H]}=2.2`$ dex) is $`M_V^{\mathrm{HB}}=V_{\mathrm{HB}}^{\mathrm{UMi}}(mM)_V^{\mathrm{UMi}}=0.43\pm 0.12`$ mag which is consistent with the Lee, Demarque, & Zinn (lee\_demarque\_zinn\_1990 (1990), hereafter LDZ) distance scale value $`M_{V,\mathrm{LDZ}}^{\mathrm{RR}}=0.17\text{[Fe/H]}+0.82=0.45`$ mag assuming, of course, that $`M_V^{\mathrm{HB}}M_V^{\mathrm{RR}}`$. Placing the Ursa Minor distance modulus estimate of Cudworth et al. (cuolsc1986 (1986)) on the LDZ distance scale and assuming our $`V`$ absorption value, $`A_V^{\mathrm{UMi}}=0.09\pm 0.03`$, we get a revised estimate of $`(mM)_0^{\mathrm{UMi}}=19.16\pm 0.11`$ mag which is just 0.02 mag lower than our own estimate.

How old is the main stellar population of Ursa Minor? We have shown that the ancient metal-poor Galactic globular cluster M92 is an excellent stellar population analog for the median stellar population of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Continuing further with the M92 analogy, we propose that Ursa Minor and M92 are coeval. The determination of the age of the main population of Ursa Minor reduces then to the problem of determining the age of M92. The Harris et al. (harris\_etal\_1997 (1997)) analysis of the Galactic globular clusters NGC 2419 and M92 found that while the full impact of Hipparcos data and improving stellar models has yet to be felt, an age range of 12–15 Gyr for the most metal-poor Galactic globular clusters is well supported by the current mix of theory and observations. Last year, Pont et al. (poet1998 (1998)) estimated that M92 is 14 Gyr based on their analysis of the luminosities of cluster turnoff and subgiant branch stars. They noted that their age estimate for M92 should probably be reduced by $``$1 Gyr if diffusion is important in the cores of globular cluster stars. Our above analysis used the Pont et al. (poet1998 (1998)) distance to M92, and so we now adopt their age estimate for M92. Using the M92 analogy one last time, we conclude that the age of the main stellar population of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy is $``$14 Gyr old.

## 4 SUMMARY

The findings of this paper can be summarized as follows:

* Our comparison of the fiducial sequence of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy with the Galactic globular cluster M92 (NGC 341) indicates that that the median stellar population of the UMi dSph galaxy is metal poor ($`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]_{\mathrm{UMi}}[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]_{\mathrm{M92}}2.2`$ dex) and ancient ($`age_{\mathrm{UMi}}age_{\mathrm{M92}}14`$ Gyr).
* The $`V`$ magnitude offset and $`VI`$ color offset between Ursa Minor and M92 are estimated to be $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=4.60\pm 0.03`$ mag and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}=0.010\pm 0.005`$ mag.
* The Ursa Minor $`BV`$ reddening and the absorption in $`V`$ are estimated to be E$`(BV)=0.03\pm 0.01`$ mag and $`A_V^{\mathrm{UMi}}=0.09\pm 0.03`$ mag assuming that the $`BV`$ reddening for M92 is $`0.02\pm 0.01`$ mag.
* We have determined that the distance modulus of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy is $`(mM)_0^{\mathrm{UMi}}=(mM)_0^{\mathrm{M92}}+\mathrm{\Delta }V_{\mathrm{UMi}\mathrm{M92}}A_V^{\mathrm{UMi}}=19.18\pm 0.12`$ mag based on the the adoption of the apparent $`V`$ distance modulus for M92 of $`(mM)_V^{\mathrm{M92}}=14.67\pm 0.08`$ mag (Pont et al. poet1998 (1998)). The Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy is then at a distance of $`69\pm 4`$ kpc from the Sun.

These HST observations indicate that Ursa Minor has had a very simple star formation history consisting mainly of a single major burst of star formation about 14 Gyr ago which probably lasted $`<`$2 Gyr. While we may have missed minor younger stellar populations due to the small field-of-view of the WFPC2 instrument, these observations clearly show that most of the stars in the central region Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy are ancient. If the ancient Galactic globular clusters, like M92, formed concurrently with the early formation of Milky Way galaxy itself, then the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal is probably as old as the Milky Way.

We would like to thank Sylvia Baggett for helping us understand the cause of all the image defects we encountered in these archival images. We thank the anonymous referee whose comments and suggestions have improved this article. We wish to thank Don VandenBerg for bringing to our attention the article on the distance to NGC 6397 by Reid & Gizis which appeared while we were finishing the manuscript. KJM was supported by a grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Order No. S-67046-F, which was awarded by the Long-Term Space Astrophysics Program (NRA 95-OSS-16). Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  was created with an image from the Digitized Sky Survey<sup>6</sup><sup>6</sup>6 Based on photographic data obtained using The UK Schmidt Telescope. The UK Schmidt Telescope was operated by the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, with funding from the UK Science and Engineering Research Council, until 1988 June, and thereafter by the Anglo-Australian Observatory. Original plate material is copyright (c) the Royal Observatory Edinburgh and the Anglo-Australian Observatory. The plates were processed into the present compressed digital form with their permission. The Digitized Sky Survey was produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute under US Government grant NAG W-2166. . This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service and the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA.    

## Appendix A A ROBUST FIDUCIAL-SEQUENCE ALGORITHM

Johnson & Bolte (jobo1998 (1998), hereafter JB98) recently published a $`V`$ versus $`VI`$ fiducial sequence for the ancient Galactic globular cluster M92 which is shown in Figure WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  on top of their stellar photometry which was kindly provided to use by Jennifer Johnson. JB98 found that mean and mode fitting proved to be susceptible to outliers due to not having enough stars to form a strong ridge line in some areas of the color-magnitude diagram; their M92 fiducial sequence was determined from the best measured stars and was subsequently drawn by hand and eye. We now demonstrate that, given enough stars, it is possible to obtain similar results with a new robust fiducial-sequence algorithm which we present herein.

The median value of a normal (a.k.a. Gaussian) distribution is the mean value of the distribution. The mean value, ($`\overline{x}`$), of a small nearly-normally-distributed sample is sensitive to the presence of outlier data values; the median value is less sensitive to outliers and is therefore considered to be a more robust statistic than the mean. Likewise, the average deviation (a.k.a. mean deviation), $`a\frac{1}{N}_{i=1}^N|x_i\overline{x}|`$, of a nearly-normally-distributed sample is, by definition, less sensitive to outliers than the standard deviation, $`\sigma [\frac{1}{N1}_{i=1}^N(x_i\overline{x})^2]^{1/2}`$, of the sample. The average deviation of a normal distribution is $``$0.8 times the standard deviation of the distribution<sup>7</sup><sup>7</sup>7 The average deviation of a normal distribution with a mean of zero and a standard deviation $`\sigma `$ is    
$$a=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}|x|\left[\frac{1}{\sigma \sqrt{2\pi }}e^{x^2/\left(2\sigma ^2\right)}\right]𝑑x=\sigma \sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}.$$
A normal distribution with a standard deviation of one ($`\sigma 1`$), in the limit of an infinite number of observations, would thus have an average deviation of $`a=\sqrt{2/\pi }0.7989`$ .  and approximately 98% of a normal distribution is found within 3.0 average deviations of the mean of the distribution<sup>8</sup><sup>8</sup>8    
$$_{3.0a}^{+3.0a}\left[\frac{1}{\sigma \sqrt{2\pi }}e^{x^2/\left(2\sigma ^2\right)}\right]𝑑x_{2.4\sigma }^{+2.4\sigma }\left[\frac{1}{\sigma \sqrt{2\pi }}e^{x^2/\left(2\sigma ^2\right)}\right]𝑑x0.9836.$$
.

A robust estimate of the mean of a nearly-normally-distributed sample can be determined by deriving the median of a subsample of the parent sample that is within 3.0 average deviations of the median of the parent sample. This process can, of course, be repeated until the difference between the parent median and the subsample median is negligibly small. Five iterations will generally suffice for the determination of fiducial sequences from high-quality stellar photometry.

We now apply this algorithm (with 5 iterations) to the M92 $`VI`$ color photometry as a function of $`V`$ magnitude in order to determine its fiducial sequence: $`[V_\mathrm{M},(VI)_\mathrm{M}]`$. The algorithm results with 0.2-mag slices in $`V`$ are given in tabular form in Table A1 and graphically in Figures WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. , WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  and WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. .

We see that our M92 fiducial sequence (Table A1) matches the fit-by-eye fiducial sequence of JB98 near the main-sequence turnoff region ($`18V21`$) to a remarkable degree with a mean and rms difference of just 0.0004$`\pm `$0.0047 mag. The scatter increases slightly for stars brighter than $`V18`$ which is not at all surprising given the small sample sizes present on the subgiant branch and red-giant branch of M92 \[see column 6 of Table A1\]. At the faintest magnitudes ($`V>21`$ mag) on the main-sequence, Figures WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  and WFPC2 OBSERVATIONS OF THE URSA MINOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>affiliation:  Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.  indicate that our fiducial sequence M92 is slightly redder than that of JB98. Noting that the numbers of the stars in the sample gradually decreases below $`V21`$ even though the M92 stellar luminosity function is known to be increasing over this magnitude range (see, e.g., Stetson & Harris stha1988 (1988)), we see that completeness effects become increasingly significant for the JB98 data below $`V21`$ mag. The well-known tendency for faint stars to be measured too bright explains why the algorithm gave redder $`VI`$ colors than the fit-by-eye values of Johnson & Bolte who consciously compensated for this effect in their determination of the M92 fiducial sequence (see discussion in §3. of JB98).

Figure Captions