ACACIAS II: element abundances for 39 stars in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor
Abstract
Element abundances in nearby galaxies provide insights into their chemical enrichment histories and place the Milky Way and its neighbours in a broader cosmological context. These systems can be studied through individual stars, whose resolved spectra enable the construction of a chemical abundance census of the Local Group. We present the second stage of the ACACIAS (extra-galactic ArChAeology with Cannon Inferred Abundances from resolved integral field unit Spectra) program, which aims to build the first homogeneous data set of stellar abundances across dwarf galaxies spanning a range of masses for comparison with Milky Way properties. We analyse low-resolution (R=1800), low-SNR (signal-to-noise ratio, ~ 25) MUSE spectra for 39 stars in the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Using the data-driven method The Cannon, we combine high-fidelity labels from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) survey with MUSE-like Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) spectra to analyse the MUSE data. This enables the determination of [Mg/Fe], [Mn/Fe], [C/Fe], [N/Fe], and [Al/Fe] on the APOGEE abundance scale, with precisions of σ = 0.09-0.37 dex. Comparing model configurations, we show that [Mg/Fe], [Mn/Fe], and [C/Fe] are best recovered from targeted spectral windows, whereas stellar parameters and [Al/Fe] benefit from full-spectrum information with telluric masking. This reflects the complementary strengths of restricted-window models, which recover abundances from direct spectral features, and full-spectrum models, which exploit correlations with other labels when diagnostic features are weak or absent. Our approach demonstrates the potential of low-resolution, low-SNR stellar spectra to build homogeneous datasets for extragalactic archaeology to better understand the chemical enrichment diversity of the Local Group.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{cornejocardenas2026acacias,
title = {{ACACIAS II: element abundances for 39 stars in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor}},
author = {Anell Cornejo-Cárdenas and Sven Buder and Melissa K. Ness and J. Trevor Mendel},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.21028},
eprint = {2610.21028},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.21028},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - ACACIAS II: element abundances for 39 stars in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor
AU - Anell Cornejo-Cárdenas
AU - Sven Buder
AU - Melissa K. Ness
AU - J. Trevor Mendel
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/14
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.21028
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.21028
AB - Element abundances in nearby galaxies provide insights into their chemical enrichment histories and place the Milky Way and its neighbours in a broader cosmological context. These systems can be studied through individual stars, whose resolved spectra enable the construction of a chemical abundance census of the Local Group. We present the second stage of the ACACIAS (extra-galactic ArChAeology with Cannon Inferred Abundances from resolved integral field unit Spectra) program, which aims to build the first homogeneous data set of stellar abundances across dwarf galaxies spanning a range of masses for comparison with Milky Way properties. We analyse low-resolution (R=1800), low-SNR (signal-to-noise ratio, ~ 25) MUSE spectra for 39 stars in the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Using the data-driven method The Cannon, we combine high-fidelity labels from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) survey with MUSE-like Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) spectra to analyse the MUSE data. This enables the determination of [Mg/Fe], [Mn/Fe], [C/Fe], [N/Fe], and [Al/Fe] on the APOGEE abundance scale, with precisions of σ = 0.09-0.37 dex. Comparing model configurations, we show that [Mg/Fe], [Mn/Fe], and [C/Fe] are best recovered from targeted spectral windows, whereas stellar parameters and [Al/Fe] benefit from full-spectrum information with telluric masking. This reflects the complementary strengths of restricted-window models, which recover abundances from direct spectral features, and full-spectrum models, which exploit correlations with other labels when diagnostic features are weak or absent. Our approach demonstrates the potential of low-resolution, low-SNR stellar spectra to build homogeneous datasets for extragalactic archaeology to better understand the chemical enrichment diversity of the Local Group.
ER -