Research Note

Current data on the globular cluster Palomar 14 are consistent with MOND

¹ Institut d'Astronomie et d'Astrophysique, Université Libre de Bruxelles, CP 226, Bvd du Triomphe, 1050, Bruxelles, Belgium
² Sterrenkundig Observatorium, Universiteit Gent, Krijgslaan 281, 9000 Gent, Belgium e-mail: gianfranco.gentile@ugent.be
³ Observatoire Astronomique, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS UMR 7550, 67000 Strasbourg, France e-mail: benoit.famaey@astro.unistra.fr
⁴ AIfA, Universität Bonn, 53121 Bonn, Germany e-mail: pavel@astro.uni-bonn.de
⁵ Dipartimento di Fisica Generale “Amedeo Avogadro”, Università degli studi di Torino, via P. Giuria 1, 10125, Torino, Italy e-mail: angus@ph.unito.it
⁶ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Torino, Torino, Italy

Received: 15 September 2009
Accepted: 15 November 2009

Abstract

Context. Certain types of globular clusters have the very important property that the predictions for their kinematics in the Newtonian and modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) contexts are divergent.

Aims. Here, we advice regarding the recent claim that the stellar kinematics data (using 17 stars) of the globular cluster Palomar 14 are inconsistent with MOND.

Methods. We compare the observations to the theoretical predictions using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, which is appropriate for small samples.

Results. We find that with the currently available data the MOND prediction for the velocity distribution can only be excluded with a very low confidence level, clearly insufficient to claim that MOND is falsified.