GHOSTS: The Stellar Populations in the Outskirts of Massive Disk Galaxies

Details GHOSTS: The Stellar Populations in the Outskirts of Massive Disk Galaxies GHOSTS: The Stellar Populations in the Outskirts of Massive Disk Galaxies

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...21111304d&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #113.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.942

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

In recent years we have started to appreciate that the outskirts of galaxies contain valuable information about the formation process of galaxies. In hierarchical galaxy formation the stellar halos and thick disks of galaxies are thought to be the result of accretion of minor satellites, predominantly in the earlier assembly phases. The size, metallicity, and amount of substructure in current day halos are therefore directly related to issues like the small scale properties of the primordial power spectrum of density fluctuations and the suppression of star formation in small dark matter halos.
I will show highlights from our ongoing HST/ACS/WFPC2 GHOSTS survey of the resolved stellar populations of 14 nearby, massive disk galaxies. I will show that the smaller galaxies (Vrot 100 km/s) have very small halos, but that most massive disk galaxies (Vrot 200 km/s) have very extended stellar envelopes. The luminosity of these envelopes seems to correlate with Hubble type and bulge-to-disk ratio, calling into question whether these are very extended bulge populations or inner halo populations. The amount of substructure varies strongly between galaxies. Finally, I will present the stellar populations of a very low surface brightness stream around M83, showing that it is old and fairly metal rich.

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