Structural Measurement of Globular Clusters in M31 and NGC 5128: Stalking the Fundamental Plane

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Hst Proposal Id #8664 Stellar Populations

Scientific paper

Globular clusters have amazingly simple structures that are well approximated by isotropic, single-mass King {1966} models. All structural properties of a King-model cluster follow from specifying its total luminosity L, central concentration c, mass-to-light ratio M/L, and binding energy E_b. However, in this four-dimensional space, real Galactic globulars inhabit only a remarkably narrow region referred to as the fundamental plane {FP}. Recently McLaughlin {1999} has shown that clusters are confined to the FP through two extremely well defined empirical relations, M/L=const and E_b L^2.1, leaving only the two remaining parameters c and L to govern their scatter on the plane. These results strongly constrain the cluster formation process; in particular, the detailed nature of the E_b{L} correlation suggests that the star formation efficiency in protoglobulars increased systematically with their mass. We propose to use the STIS/CCD camera in SNAPSHOT mode to image a wide selection of individual globular clusters in two other large galaxies {M31 and NGC 5128} for measurement of their structural parameters {r_c, c, central surface brightness}. We will use these to compute their binding energies and define the FP in these two galaxies. Comparison with the Milky Way will then give us powerful new information on just how ``universal'' the cluster formation process was in the early protogalaxies.

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