Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...211.5829h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #58.29; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.838
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We present the results of our photometric survey on globular cluster systems in early-type galaxies, aiming at the age structure and eventually the formation scenario for their host galaxies. The tight link between major star formation events and the formation of globular clusters makes the later ideal probes of galaxy evolution. The detection of globular cluster sub- populations, e.g. in NGC 4365 and NGC 5846, is the most important result of this study so far. The increasing number of data sets (optical, near-infrared photometry of globular cluster systems) allows us now to compare the age structure in individual galaxies and to search for possible, if not expected, correlations between the two. The former is described by the mean age of the globular cluster sample, derived from color-color distributions. For example, galaxies in a group environment, such as NGC 4365 and NGC 5846, were found to have the lowest mean age.
The knowledge about the age and/or metallicity of globular clusters is not only important with respect to the galaxy formation itself. Early-type galaxies may be the most massive stellar structures in the Universe but they are also strong X-ray emitters. The hard X-ray flux is dominated by the contribution of Low Mass X-ray binaries, which are mostly found in globular clusters. First results have shown that metal-rich globular clusters are about three times more likely to host a LMXB than metal- poor ones. Based on the limited amount of data it seems that the LMXB formation efficiency in a globular cluster scales with its metallicity. We use the results of our globular cluster study in early-type galaxies in combination with Chandra observations to further investigate the globular cluster- LMXB connection.
Hempel Maren
Kundu Anjan
Maccarone Thomas
Zepf Stephen E.
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