The light-weighted age and metallicity of Galactic globular clusters

摘要

Spectra synthesis is entering a new era with the availability of large and high-quality spectroscopic data and full spectrum fitting methods. Establishing the reliability whether the STARLIGHT code (a full spectrum fitting code, Cid Fernandes et al. (Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 358:363, 2005)) is suitable to study the properties of various types of galaxies is vital to galaxy study. In testing this possibility, Galactic globular clusters (GCs) provide an excellent medium. Taking the 40 Galactic GCs as an example in our work, we analyze their integrated spectra from Schiavon et al. (Astrophys. J. Suppl. 160:163, 2005) and obtain their mixtures of stellar populations that best represents their composite nature. Through analyzing the distributions of stellar ages and metallicities respectively, we find that the stellar metallicity distribution is centered at a low value and the stellar age distribution is very scattered. To compare with the literature, we also calculate the light-weighted ages and metallicities of GCs, and we find that the light-weighted metallicities agree with the literature, while the light-weighted ages are lower than those of the literature. This demonstrates that STARLIGHT can be used to obtain the metallicities of GCs.