Hubble Space Telescope observations of the white dwarf cooling sequence of M4

We investigate in detail the white dwarf cooling sequence of the globular cluster Messier 4. In particular, we study the influence of various systematic uncertainties, both observational and theoretical, on the determination of the cluster age from the white dwarf cooling sequence. These include uncertainties in the distance to the cluster and the extinction along the line of sight, as well as the white dwarf mass, envelope, and core compositions and the white dwarf-main-sequence mass relation. We find that fitting to the full two-dimensional color-magnitude diagram offers a more robust method for age determination than the traditional method of fitting the one-dimensional white dwarf luminosity function. After taking into account the various uncertainties, we find a best-fit age of 12.1 Gyr, with a 95% lower limit of 10.3 Gyr. We also perform fits using two other sets of cooling models from the literature. The models of Chabrier et al. yield an encouragingly similar result, although the models of Salaris et al. do not provide as good a fit. Our results support our previous determination of a delay between the formation of the Galactic halo and the onset of star formation in the Galactic disk. Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. These observations are associated with proposal GO-8679.