Galaxy Formation from Spectroscopy of Extragalactic Globular Cluster Systems

Abstract

I discuss how spectroscopy of extragalactic globular clusters provides a powerful probe of the formation history and mass distribution of galaxies. One critical area is spectroscopy of objects which have been identified as candidate young globular clusters through HST imaging of galaxy mergers. I discuss how such data can constrain models of globular cluster and galaxy formation. As an example, I present new spectra which confirm the presence of young globular clusters in NGC 1275. A second way wide-field spectroscopy can be used to probe the formation history and mass distribution of galaxies is through spectroscopy of large numbers of globular clusters around elliptical galaxies. Metallicities obtained from such data place strong constraints on models of galaxy formation, and velocities determined from the same data provide kinematical tracers of the mass distribution out to distances of $\sim 100$ kpc.