Related papers: On the Interpretation of the Globular Cluster Lumi…
In a recent preprint, Hearin et al. (2012,H12) suggest that the halo mass-richness calibration of clusters can be improved by using the difference in the magnitude of the brightest and the second brightest galaxy (magnitude gap) as an…
High mass galaxies, with halo masses $M_{200} \ge 10^{10} M_{\odot}$, reveal a remarkable near-linear relation between their globular cluster (GC) system mass and their host galaxy halo mass. Extending this relation to the mass range of…
Globular Cluster (GC) systems of most early-type galaxies show bimodal optical color distributions, yet their Luminosity Functions (LFs) look like simple Gaussians with turn-over magnitudes used for determination of distances and the Hubble…
We investigate the error properties of certain galaxy luminosity function (GLF) estimators. Using a cluster expansion of the density field, we show how, for both volume and flux limited samples, the GLF estimates are covariant. The…
We have investigated the properties of the stellar mass function in the globular cluster NGC6397 using a large set of HST observations that include WFPC2 images in V and I, obtained at ~4' and 10' radial distances, and a series of deep…
We present the luminosity function (LF) of star clusters in M51 based on HST/ACS observations taken as part of the Hubble Heritage project. The clusters are selected based on their size and with the resulting 5990 clusters we present one of…
We present measurements of the excess mass-to-light ratio measured aroundMaxBCG galaxy clusters observed in the SDSS. This red sequence cluster sample includes objects from small groups with masses ranging from ~5x10^{12} to ~10^{15}…
We investigated the optical properties of 7 clusters of galaxies observed in three colors over the range of absolute magnitudes -24 < M < -12. Our aim is to estimate the Luminosity Function and the total cluster luminosity of our sample in…
Dynamical mass estimates of ultra-compact dwarfs galaxies and massive globular clusters in the Fornax and Virgo clusters and around the giant elliptical Cen A have revealed some surprising results: 1) above about 10^6 M_sun the…
The observed brightness of the Tully-Fisher relation suggests a low stellar M/L ratio and a "bottom-light" IMF in disc galaxies, but the corresponding efficiency of chemical enrichment tends to exceed the observational estimates. Either…
Luminosity functions have been determined for star cluster populations in 20 nearby (4-30 Mpc), star-forming galaxies based on ACS source lists generated by the Hubble Legacy Archive. Comparisons are made with other recently generated…
We explore the mass-to-light ratio in galaxy clusters and its relation to the cluster mass. We study the relations among the optical luminosity ($L_{op}$), the cluster mass ($M_{200}$) and the number of cluster galaxies within $r_{200}$…
Many scenarios for the origin of the chemical anomalies observed in globular clusters (GCs; i.e., multiple populations) require that GCs were much more massive at birth, up to $10-100\times$, than they are presently. This is invoked in…
It has been suggested that the mass-to-light ($M/L$) ratio of gravitationally clustering objects is scale-independent on scales beyond galaxy clusters, and may also be independent of the mass of the objects. In this paper, we show that the…
Like early-type galaxies, also nearby galaxy clusters define a Fundamental Plane, a luminosity-radius, and a luminosity-velocity dispersion relations, whose physical origin is still unclear. By means of high resolution N--body simulations…
We constructed the composite luminosity function (LF) of clusters of galaxies in the five SDSS photometric bands u,g,r,i and z from the RASS-SDSS galaxy cluster catalog. Background and foreground galaxies are subtracted using both a local…
We test whether the peak absolute magnitude Mv(TO) of the Globular Cluster Luminosity Function (GCLF) can be used for reliable extragalactic distance determinations. Starting with the luminosity function of the Galactic Globular Clusters…
We point out a strong time-evolution of the mass-to-light conversion factor \eta commonly used to estimate masses of dense star clusters from observed cluster radii and stellar velocity dispersions. We use a gas-dynamical model coupled with…
We present a high precision, large sample luminosity function (LF) for the Galactic globular cluster M3. With a combination of ground based and Hubble Space Telescope data we cover the entire radial extent of the cluster. The observed LF is…
Hubble Space Telescope imaging for 26 giant early-type galaxies, all drawn from the MAST archive, is used to carry out photometry of their surrounding globular cluster (GC) systems. Most of these targets are Brightest Cluster Galaxies…