Abstract
We determine, by means of a semi-empirical study, the masses of horizontal branch stars in the glo-bular cluster M3 (NGC 5272). We used the most recent and reliable observational datasets (broadband BVI photometry) available for the cluster, both for variable and nonvariable stars, to infer the most likely masses of individual horizontal branch stars by comparison against theoretical evolutionary tracks, suitably transformed to the observational planes. We found a mass distribution that is adequately described by a Gaussian, with = 0.64M_☉ and σ = 0.020M☉, thus su-pporting the Gaussian shape previously obtained by Rood & Crocker (1989, in The Use of Pulsating Stars in Fundamental Problems of Astronomy, 218) without taking evolutionary effects into account. A recent suggestion of strong mass bimodality in M3 (Castellani et al. 2005, A&A, 437, 1017) is not supported by our analysis.
