Wide-field study of a rich globular cluster system: the field elliptical NGC 1172

LILIA BASSINO; JUAN PABLO CASO; ANA INÉS ENNIS; MATÍAS GÓMEZ

La Serena

Congreso; Seconid Binational Meeting SOCHIAS-AAA; 2018

Universidad de La Serena (ULS)

We present a wide-field and deep photometric study of the globular cluster system (GCS) associated to the elliptical galaxy NGC 1172 (d ~ 21 Mpc, Mv ~ -20 mag), looking for evidence to reconstruct their evolutionary history and, within this framework, explain peculiar characteristics of the GCS.Observational material consists of three GMOS-GEMINI fields in g', r', i', which allows us to study the GCS with a complete areal coverage, as it had never been done before.Previous studies of the inner GCS of NGC 1172 performed with a single HST-ACS field (i.e. a small FOV) as well as preliminary results from our central GMOS field, point to a large number of globular cluster (GC) candidates, an abnormally large specific frequency (number of GCs normalized by the visual absolute magnitude of the host galaxy), and a very extended GCS.As a consequence of the low-density environment and richness of this GCS, it is particularly interesting to analyze the GC color and radial projected distributions, and to calculate the "total" GC population and specific frequency.