scholarly journals Extragalactic Globular Cluster Systems in the Near-IR

2002 ◽  
Vol 207 ◽  
pp. 294-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Puzia ◽  
Markus Kissler-Patig ◽  
Jean Brodie ◽  
Paul Goudfrooij ◽  
Michael Hilker ◽  
...  

Extragalactic Globular Clusters are useful tracers of galaxy formation and evolution. Photometric studies of globular cluster systems beyond the Local Group are still the most popular method to investigate their physical properties, such as their ages and metallicities. However, the limitations of optical photometry are well known. The better wavelength sampling of the underlying cluster's SED using K-band photometry combined with optical passbands allows us to create colors which reduce the age-metallicity degeneracy to the largest extent. Here we report on the very first results of our near-IR photometric survey of globular cluster systems in early-type galaxies outside the Local Group.

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 347-349
Author(s):  
Stephen E. Zepf

AbstractThis paper addresses the questions of what we have learned about how and when dense star clusters form, and what studies of star clusters have revealed about galaxy formation and evolution. One important observation is that globular clusters are observed to form in galaxy mergers and starbursts in the local universe, which both provides constraints on models of globular cluster formation, and suggests that similar physical conditions existed when most early-type galaxies and their globular clusters formed in the past. A second important observation is that globular cluster systems typically have bimodal color distributions. This was predicted by merger models, and indicates an episodic formation history for elliptical galaxies. A third and very recent result is the discovery of large populations of intermediate age globular clusters in several elliptical galaxies through the use of optical to near-infrared colors. These provide an important link between young cluster systems observed in starbursts and mergers and old cluster systems. This continuum of ages of the metal-rich globular cluster systems also indicates that there is no special age or epoch for the formation of the metal-rich globular clusters, which comprise about half of the cluster population. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of recent results on the globular cluster – low-mass X-ray binary connection.


2004 ◽  
Vol 217 ◽  
pp. 210-211
Author(s):  
Peter Anders ◽  
Uta Fritze-V. Alvensleben ◽  
Richard de Grijs

Young clusters are observed to form in a variety of interacting galaxies and violent starbursts, a substantial number resembling the progenitors of the well-studied globular clusters in mass and size. By studying young clusters in merger remnants and peculiar galaxies, we can therefore learn about the violent star formation history of these galaxies. We present a new set of evolutionary synthesis models of our GALEV code specifically developed to include the gaseous emission of presently forming star clusters, and a new tool that allows to determine individual cluster metallicities, ages, extinction values and masses from a comparison of a large grid of model Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) with multi-color observations. First results for the newly-born clusters in NGC 1569 are presented.


1999 ◽  
Vol 186 ◽  
pp. 181-184
Author(s):  
Duncan A. Forbes

There exists a relationship between globular cluster mean metallicity and parent galaxy luminosity (e.g. Brodie & Huchra 1991; Forbes et al. 1996), which appears to be similar to that between stellar metallicity and galaxy luminosity. The globular cluster relation has a similar slope but is offset by about 0.5 dex to lower metallicity. The similarity of these relations suggests that both the globular cluster system and their parent galaxy have shared a common chemical enrichment history. If we can understand the formation and evolution of the globulars, we will also learn something about galaxy formation. With this aim in mind we have created the SAGES (Study of the Astrophysics of Globular clusters in Extragalactic Systems) project. Project members include Brodie, Elson, Forbes, Freeman, Grillmair, Huchra, Kissler–Patig and Schroder. We are using HST Imaging and Keck spectroscopy to study extragalactic globular cluster systems. Further details are given at http://www.ucolick.org/~mkissler/Sages/sages.html.


2002 ◽  
Vol 207 ◽  
pp. 207-217
Author(s):  
Markus Kissler-Patig

A brief review on globular cluster sub-populations in galaxies, and their constraints on galaxy formation and evolution is given. The metal-poor and metal-rich sub-populations are put in a historical context, and their properties, as known to date, are summarized. We review why the study of these sub-populations is extremely useful for the study of galaxy formation and evolution, but highlight a few caveats with the current interpretations. We re-visit the current globular cluster system formation scenarios and show how they boil down to a single scenario for the metal-poor clusters (namely the formation in “universal”, small fragments at high z) and that a hierarchical formation seems favored for the metal-rich clusters.


2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (S246) ◽  
pp. 394-402
Author(s):  
Stephen E. Zepf

AbstractThis paper reviews some of the observational properties of globular cluster systems, with a particular focus on those that constrain and inform models of the formation and dynamical evolution of globular cluster systems. I first discuss the observational determination of the globular cluster luminosity and mass function. I show results from new very deep HST data on the M87 globular cluster system, and discuss how these constrain models of evaporation and the dynamical evolution of globular clusters. The second subject of this review is the question of how to account for the observed constancy of the globular cluster mass function with distance from the center of the host galaxy. The problem is that a radial trend is expected for isotropic cluster orbits, and while the orbits are observed to be roughly isotropic, no radial trend in the globular cluster system is observed. I review three extant proposals to account for this, and discuss observations and calculations that might determine which of these is most correct. The final subject is the origin of the very weak mass-radius relation observed for globular clusters. I discuss how this strongly constrains how globular clusters form and evolve. I also note that the only viable current proposal to account for the observed weak mass-radius relation naturally effects the globular cluster mass function, and that these two problems may be closely related.


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (S312) ◽  
pp. 201-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhou Fan ◽  
Yanbin Yang

AbstractThe recent studies show that the formation and evolution process of the nearby galaxies are still unclear. By using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) 3.6m telescope, the PanDAS shows complicated substructures (dwarf satellite galaxies, halo globular clusters, extended clusters, star streams, etc.) in the halo of M31 to ~150 kpc from the center of galaxy and M31-M33 interaction has been studied. In our work, we would like to investigate formation, evolution and interaction of M31 and M33, which are the nearest two spiral galaxies in Local Group. The star cluster systems of the two galaxies are good tracers to study the dynamics of the substructures and the interaction. Since 2010, the Xinglong 2.16m, Lijiang 2.4m and MMT 6.5m telescopes have been used for our spectroscopic observations. The radial velocities and Lick absorption-line indices can thus be measured with the spectroscopy and then ages, metallicities and masses of the star clusters can be fitted with the simple stellar population models. These parameters could be used as the input physical parameters for numerical simulations of M31-M33 interaction.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (S235) ◽  
pp. 172-174
Author(s):  
Kenji Bekki

AbstractWe discuss how stellar galactic nuclei (SGN) form and evolve during galaxy formation and evolution based on chemodynamical simulations on the central regions (1-1000 pc) of galaxies. Our simulations demonstrate that dissipative formation of SGN through rapid transfer of gas into the central 10 pc of galaxies is more consistent with recent observations of SGN than dissipationless formation of SGN through merging of globular clusters (GCs). Nuclear structures in the remnants of major galaxy mergers between low-mass, nucleated spirals are found to depend strongly on the mass-ratio of massive black holes (MBHs) to SGN in spirals in the sense that the remnants have more distinct SGN in the mergers with the smaller MBH-to-SGN-mass-ratios. During the destruction of low-mass, nucleated galaxies by strong tidal fields of giant galaxies, SGN can remain intact. The stripped SGN can be observed as bright GCs around the giant galaxies. The color-magnitude relation of metal-poor GCs (referred to as “the blue tilt”) recently discovered for bright galaxies is similar to that of SGN, which suggests that the origin of the blue tilt is closely associated with the formation processes of SGN of gas-rich, low-mass dwarfs in the high redshift universe.


2002 ◽  
Vol 207 ◽  
pp. 281-286
Author(s):  
Michael Hilker

In this contribution, first results of deep VLT (V,I) photometry in the central region of the Hydra I galaxy cluster are presented. Many star clusters have been identified not only around several early-type galaxies, but also in the intra-cluster field, as far as 250 kpc from the cluster center. Outside the bulges of the central galaxies NGC 3311 and NGC 3309, the intra-cluster globular cluster system is dominated by blue clusters whose spatial distribution is similar to that of the (newly discovered) dwarf galaxies in Hydra I. The color distributions of globular clusters around NGC 3311 and NGC 3309 are multimodal, with a sharp blue peak and a slightly broader distribution of the red cluster population.


2002 ◽  
Vol 207 ◽  
pp. 333-335
Author(s):  
K.L. Rhode ◽  
S.E. Zepf

We have undertaken a survey of the globular cluster systems of a large sample of elliptical and spiral galaxies in order to test predictions of elliptical galaxy formation models. Here we outline the survey and present a summary of our results for the Virgo elliptical NGC 4472.


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (S312) ◽  
pp. 197-200
Author(s):  
Alice Zocchi ◽  
Mark Gieles ◽  
Vincent Hénault-Brunet

AbstractFinding an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) in a globular cluster (GC), or proving its absence, is a crucial ingredient in our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. The challenge is to identify a unique signature of an IMBH that cannot be accounted for by other processes. Observational claims of IMBH detection are often based on analyses of the kinematics of stars, such as a rise in the velocity dispersion profile towards the centre. In this contribution we discuss the degeneracy between this IMBH signal and pressure anisotropy in the GC. We show that that by considering anisotropic models it is possible to partially explain the innermost shape of the projected velocity dispersion profile, even though models that do not account for an IMBH do not exhibit a cusp in the centre.


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