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The Relative Ages of the Globular Cluster Subpopulations in M87*

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Published 9 August 2002 • © 2002. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
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Article information
Author e-mails

andresj@physics.rutgers.edu

pcote@physics.rutgers.edu

west@bohr.uhh.hawaii.edu

marzke@quark.sfsu.edu

Author affiliations

1 Claudio Anguita Fellow

2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, 136 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854

3 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 200 West Kawili Street, LS2, Hilo, HI 96720-4091

4 Department of Physics and Astronomy, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132

Dates

Received 17 May 2002
Accepted 29 July 2002
Published

Citation

Andrés Jordán et al 2002 ApJ 576 L113

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1086/343759

Keywords

galaxies: formation; galaxies: individual (M87) ; galaxies: star clusters

Journal RSS feed

1538-4357/576/2/L113

Abstract

Relative ages for the globular cluster (GC) subpopulations in the Virgo giant elliptical galaxy M87 (NGC 4486) have been determined from Strömgren photometry obtained with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope. Using a variety of population synthesis models, and assuming the GC mass at the turnover of the luminosity function is the same for both subpopulations, differential ages have been determined from the observed magnitudes at the turnover of the globular cluster luminosity function and from the mean color of each subpopulation. We measure an age difference between the two subpopulations of 0.2 ± 1.5 (systematic) ± 2 (random) Gyr, in the sense that the blue GCs are formally older. Thus, to within our measurement errors, the two subpopulations are found to be coeval. Combined with previous spectroscopic age determinations for M87 GCs, our results favor a picture in which the GCs associated with this galaxy are formed at high redshift and within a period of a few gigayears.

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Footnotes

  • * 

    Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555.

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