The age of the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy from imaging with WFPC2

From images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's WFPC2, we have obtained photometry of a field in the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy to 3 mag bel ow the main-sequence turnoff. We determine an age equal to that of the earl iest globular clusters for the bulk of the stars in our field of view. We a ttempt to constrain the star formation history of the Sculptor dwarf by exa mining the main-sequence luminosity function. The presence of a half-dozen blue straggler candidates blueward of the turnoff points to a possibly comp lex star formation history. However, the contribution of any intermediate-a ge population is difficult to measure conclusively, because of the uncertai n origin of blue stragglers and the sparseness of the photometric sample.