The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society (천문학회보)
- Volume 41 Issue 1
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- Pages.32.2-32.2
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- 2016
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- 1226-2692(pISSN)
Ten Years of Debate on the Origin of Globular Cluster Color Bimodality
- Kim, Hak-Sub (Department of Astronomy & Center for Galaxy Evolution Research, Yonsei University) ;
- Yoon, Suk-Jin (Department of Astronomy & Center for Galaxy Evolution Research, Yonsei University)
- Published : 2016.04.12
Abstract
The globular cluster (GC) systems in most elliptical galaxies show bimodal color distributions. This phenomenon has been generally regarded as a bimodal metallicity distribution, indicating the presence of two sub-populations in a GC system. However, since a new explanation on the bimodality was introduced where the nonlinear metallicity-to-color conversion can cause bimodal color distributions, the origin of this phenomenon has been under hot debate. In this presentation, we briefly review the ten-year debate on the origin of GC color bimodality, and present our recent pieces of evidence on the nonlinear nature of GC color-metallicity relations.
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