CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The assembly history of the galaxies can be studied by mapping stellar populations at great radial distances from their centers. The chemical and dynamic properties originated by accretion events that have suffered throughout its history should be preserved in these regions. In this sense, one of the tools used to study the abundances of metals and ages at such distances is longslit spectroscopy. However, this technique has the disadvantage of providing information only along the same requiring different orientations, and therefore additional observation time in order to perform a global analysis of the galaxy at different radii. Another way to address this problem is to examine the stellar population parameters (age, metallicity, [α/Fe] abundance ratios) of a set of globular clusters (GCs). If we consider these objects as real tracers of major star formation events that occur in a galaxy, then the average stellar population of a GC should resemble that of the galaxy. On the other hand, a third approach used in some nearby galaxies to describe their physical properties at different galactocentric radii is to extract information from multi-object spectroscopic observations centered on their GCs. Using Gemini/GMOS instrument, it is possible to obtain spectra of approximately 40 objects over a field of view of ∼6×6 arcmin2. The flux incident on each slitlet can then be thought of as a sum of contributions from the GC and a contribution from the diffuse light of the target galaxy.In this context, using observations on GCs associated with the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1316, we focus on the third aforementioned approach in order to study spatially the kinematics and stellar populations of the stellar field component of this galaxy. NGC 1316 is a radio galaxy catalogued as a remnant of an intermediate-age merger(∼ 2-3 Gyr), with a complex GC system showing a dominant subpopulation of young clusters. Therefore, the analysis of the diffuse light of this galaxy at different galactocentric radii is essential to infer possible mergers and episodes of star formation prior to the main event that gave rise to its young system. At the same time, this analysis will allow us to obtain a more complete picture of it.