The Outer Regions of the Nearby Sc Galaxies NGC 2403 and M33: Evidence for an Intermediate-Age Population at Large Radii

Deep g'r'i'z' images obtained with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph areused to investigate the stellar content in the outer regions of the nearby Scgalaxies NGC 2403 and M33. The red giant branch tip occurs at i' = 23.6 +/- 0.1in NGC 2403, and the Cepheid and RGB-tip distance scales for this galaxy are ingood agreement. While very young stars are restricted to radii < 10 kpc alongthe plane of the disk, a population of bright asymptotic giant branch (AGB)stars is present out to r = 20 kpc, indicating that star formation occuredoutside of the present-day star-forming disk of NGC 2403 during intermediateepochs. The AGB stars are not in a tidal stream; in fact, the ratio of AGBstars above the RGB-tip to those below the RGB-tip does not change with radius,indicating that the bright AGB stars are uniformly mixed with the fainterstellar content throughout the field. A similar population of bright AGB starsis detected in the outer regions of M33, and the ratio of bright AGB stars tostars on the upper RGB is at least as large as that measured in the outerregions of NGC 2403; thus, an intermediate-age population occurs well outsideof the young star-forming disk of M33.Comment: 41 pages; 21 figures; to appear in A