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In the context of a project aimed at characterizing the properties of the so-called Bulge Fossil Fragments (the fossil remnants of the bulge formation epoch), here we present the first determination of the metallicity distribution of Liller 1. For a sample of 64 individual member stars we used ESO-MUSE spectra to measure the equivalent width of the Ca II triplet and then derive the iron abundance. To test the validity of the adopted calibration in the metal-rich regime, the procedure was first applied to three reference bulge globular clusters (NGC 6569, NGC 6440, and NGC 6528). In all the three cases, we found single-component iron distributions, with abundance values fully in agreement with those reported in the literature. The application of the same methodology to Liller 1 yielded, instead, a clear bimodal iron distribution, with a subsolar component at [Fe/H] = −0.48 dex (σ = 0.22) and a supersolar component at [Fe/H] = +0.26 dex (σ = 0.17). The latter is found to be significantly more centrally concentrated than the metal-poor population, as expected in a self-enrichment scenario and in agreement with that found in another bulge system, Terzan 5. The obtained metallicity distribution is astonishingly similar to that predicted by the reconstructed star formation history of Liller 1, which is characterized by three main bursts and a low, but constant, activity of star formation over the entire lifetime. These findings provide further support to the possibility that, similar to Terzan 5, Liller 1 is also a Bulge Fossil Fragment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We used optical images acquired with the Wide Field Camera of the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble Space Telescope and near-infrared data from Gemini Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics System (GeMS)/Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager (GSAOI) to construct a high-resolution extinction map in the direction of the bulge stellar system Liller 1. In spite of its appearance of a globular cluster, Liller 1 has been recently found to harbor two stellar populations with remarkably different ages, and it is the second complex stellar system with similar properties (after Terzan 5) discovered in the bulge, thus defining a new class of objects: the Bulge Fossil Fragments. Because of its location in the inner bulge of the Milky Way, very close to the Galactic plane, Liller 1 is strongly affected by large and variable extinction. The simultaneous study of both the optical and the near-infrared color–magnitude diagrams revealed that the extinction coefficient RV in the direction of Liller 1 has a much smaller value than commonly assumed for diffuse interstellar medium (RV = 2.5, instead of 3.1), in agreement with previous findings along different light paths to the Galactic bulge. The derived differential reddening map has a spatial resolution ranging from 1″ to 3″ over a field of view of about 90″ × 90″. We found that the absorption clouds show patchy substructures with extinction variations as large as δE(B − V) ∼ 0.9 mag. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]