Related papers: Globular Cluster Formation in the Virgo Cluster
This paper explores if the mean properties of Early-Type Galaxies (ETG) can be reconstructed from "genetic" information stored in their GCs (i.e., in their chemical abundances, spatial distributions and ages). This approach implies that the…
We report the discovery of significant localized structures in the projected two-dimensional (2D) spatial distributions of the Globular Cluster (GC) systems of the ten brightest galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. We use catalogs of GCs…
We study the azimuthal distribution of globular clusters (GCs) in early-type galaxies and compare them to their host galaxies using data from the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. We find that in host galaxies with visible elongation (epsilon >…
The discovery of a large population of intra-cluster star clusters in the central region of the Hydra I and Centaurus galaxy clusters is presented. Based on deep VLT photometry (V,I), many star clusters have been identified not only around…
The ages of globular clusters in our own Milky Way are known with precision of about \pm 1 Gyr, hence their formation at redshifts z>~3 and their role in hierarchical cosmology and the reionization of the intergalactic medium remain…
Globular cluster (GC) systems around galaxies of a vast mass range show remarkably simple scaling relations. The combined mass of all GCs is a constant fraction of the total galaxy mass and the mean metallicity and metallicity dispersion of…
The conjecture that the ancient globular clusters (GCs) formed at the center of their own dark matter halos was first proposed by Peebles (1984), and has recently been revived to explain the puzzling abundance patterns observed within many…
Metal-poor globular clusters (GCs) can provide a probe of the earliest epoch of star formation in the Universe, being the oldest stellar systems observable. In addition, young and intermediate-age low-metallicity GCs are present in external…
Observations of young star clusters reveal that the high-mass end of the cluster initial mass function (CIMF) deviates from a pure power-law and instead truncates exponentially. We investigate the effects of this truncation on the formation…
The relations between the luminosities $M_{V}$, the metallicities $[Fe/H]$, the Galactocentric radii $R$, and the central concentration indices $c$ of Galactic globular clusters are discussed. It is found that the most luminous clusters…
We present the results of a Keck spectroscopic study of globular clusters associated with the Virgo Cluster dwarf elliptical VCC 1386. We analyze blue spectroscopic absorption lines from 3500-5500 A for 13 globular cluster candidates and…
The formation of globular clusters (GC) with their multiple stellar populations remains a puzzling, unsolved problem in astrophysics. One way to gather critical insight consists in finding sizable numbers of GC progenitors (GCP) while still…
Observed metallicities of globular clusters reflect physical conditions in the interstellar medium of their high-redshift host galaxies. Globular cluster systems in most large galaxies display bimodal color and metallicity distributions,…
While the Virgo cluster is the nearest galaxy cluster and therefore the best observed one, little is known about its formation history. In this paper, a set of cosmological simulations that resemble the Local Universe is used to shed the…
Metal-poor globular clusters (GCs) are our local link to the earliest epochs of star formation and galaxy building. Studies of extragalactic GC systems using deep, high-quality imaging have revealed a small but significant slope to the…
Globular cluster systems in most large galaxies display bimodal color and metallicity distributions, which are frequently interpreted as indicating two distinct modes of cluster formation. The metal-rich (red) and metal-poor (blue) clusters…
We analyze the metallicity distributions of globular clusters belonging to 28 early-type galaxies in the survey of Kundu & Whitmore (2001). A Monte Carlo algorithm which simulates the chemical evolution of galaxies that grow hierarchically…
We present radial velocities for 144 globular clusters around the Virgo gE NGC 4472 (M49), and ages and metallicities from co-added spectra of 131 clusters. We confirm our earlier finding that the metal-poor clusters have a significantly…
The most massive elliptical galaxies show a prominent multi-modality in their globular cluster system color distributions. Understanding the mechanisms which lead to multiple globular cluster sub-populations is essential for a complete…
Globular clusters in most large galaxies are a mixture of metal-poor and metal-rich (bimodal), but the halo stars are almost entirely metal-rich. This and other lines of evidence argue that the metal-poor globular clusters formed within…