| Abstract | A new technique for determining accurate temperatures and abundances in red giants, Washington CCD photometry, is described. The broad bands of the Washington system, its high abundances sensitivity at all metallicities, and the ability to simultaneously observe a large number of giants make this a very powerful technique for abundance determination in distant systems. The method is applied to the intermediate-age cluster NGC 2213 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Combined with published main-sequence photometry, the derived abundance indicates a true LMC distance modulus of 18.2 + or - 0.2. Results indicate that one could determine both the age and abundance, and thus the distance, of Magellanic Cloud clusters with high accuracy from Washington photometry using the 4-m telescope in about an hour of observing time per cluster. |
