Young Globular Clusters in Merger Remnants -- Part 4

Details Young Globular Clusters in Merger Remnants -- Part 4 Young Globular Clusters in Merger Remnants -- Part 4

Dec 1997

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997hst..prop.7468s&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #7468

Physics

Hst Proposal Id #7468 Galaxies

Scientific paper

Mergers seem to have played a major role in determining the shapes and dynamics of E and S0 galaxies. A few galactic mergers still occur and offer valuable clues to past evolutionary processes. Young globular star clusters formed during mergers hold promise for age-dating recent and ancient such events, besides helping shed light on the cluster-formation process itself. With young globulars in several ongoing mergers and < 1 Gyr old remnants now well studied {NGC4038/39, MGC3256, NGC3921, and NGC7252}, we propose to observe six galaxies ranging from about 1-3 Gyr old candidate merger remnants to bona fide ellipticals. The four chosen merger remnants all show signatures of aging major starbursts and are to be searched for young to intermediate-age globulars, while the two E's are rich in fine structure and show evidence for possessing intermediate-age globulars. The proposed new HST observations, supplemented by archival data, aim at {1} measuring high-accuracy V-I color indices to considerably fainter magnitudes than done before, and {2} determining the luminosity functions of first- and second-generation clusters to 2-3 mag past the peak for old globulars. Dithering and deep observations in V and I form a crucial part of our strategy. This program should yield valuable new information on globular-cluster system formation, the specific cluster frequency, and the possible evolution of the luminosity function from a power law for very young clusters to the Gaussian typical of old globulars.

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