The Globular Cluster System of the Spiral Galaxy NGC 7814

摘要

We present the results of a wide-field photometric study of the globular cluster (GC) system of the edge-on Sab spiral NGC 7814. This is the first spiral to be fully analyzed from our survey of the GC systems of a large sample of galaxies beyond the Local Group. NGC 7814 is of particular interest because a previous study estimated that it has 500–1000 GCs, giving it the largest specific frequency (SN) known for a spiral. Understanding this galaxy's GC system is important in terms of our understanding of the GC populations of spirals in general and has implications for the formation of massive galaxies. We observed the galaxy in BVR filters with the WIYN 3.5 m telescope and used image classification and three-color photometry to select GC candidates. We also analyzed archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 images of NGC 7814, both to help quantify the contamination level of the WIYN GC candidate list and to detect GCs in the inner part of the galaxy halo. Combining HST data with high-quality ground-based images allows us to trace the entire radial extent of this galaxy's GC system and determine the total number of GCs directly through observation. We find that rather than being an especially high-SN spiral, NGC 7814 has 200 GCs and SN ~ 1, making it comparable to the two most well-studied spiral galaxies, the Milky Way and M31. We explore the implications of these results for models of the formation of galaxies and their GC systems. The initial results from our survey suggest that the GC systems of typical elliptical galaxies can be accounted for by the merger of two or more spirals, but that for highly luminous elliptical galaxies, additional physical processes may be needed.