The stellar population and metallicity distribution of the Sombrero galaxy

Abstract

Hubble Space Telescope studies of the resolved stellar population of elliptical galaxies have shown that the galaxies form by steady accretion of gas which is all the while forming stars and evolving chemically to a metallicity distribution that is as high as solar composition in the most massive objects that have been analyzed, and much lower for low mass ellipticals. In this paper we study for the first time the stellar content of an early type spiral galaxy, the massive disk galaxy, the Sombrero, NGC 4594. We consider whether the metallicity distribution function (MDF) in the observed field matches that of elliptical galaxies of some luminosity, and what these data imply for the accretion and enrichment model that can be fitted to the MDF. The MDF of NGC 4594 is similar to that of the elliptical galaxy of similar luminosity, NGC 5128. The field we are probing is a combination of the galaxy's bulge and halo.

Accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (1)

• An HST/ACS investigation of the spatial and chemical structure and sub-structure of NGC 891, a Milky Way analogue

Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Dual Stellar Halos in the Standard Elliptical Galaxy M105 and Formation of Massive Early-Type Galaxies
• Surprises in Image Decomposition of Edge-on Galaxies: does Sombrero have a (classical) bulge?
• The Strikingly Metal-Rich Halo of the Sombrero Galaxy
• Population gradients and photometric metallicities in early- and transition-type dwarf galaxies: Clues from the Sculptor group
• Tracing the Giant Outer Halo of the Mysterious Massive Disk Galaxy M104 I. Photometry of the Extended Globular Cluster Systems
• The Bulge of M31
• The Metallicity Distribution Function in Outer Halo Fields of Simulated Elliptical Galaxies Compared to Observations of NGC 5128
• Globular clusters in M104: Tracing kinematics and metallicities from the centre to the halo