A New Method for Estimating Dark Matter Halo Masses using Globular Cluster Systems

Understand

All galaxies are thought to reside within large halos of dark matter, whose properties can only be determined from indirect observations.

• The formation and assembly of galaxies is determined from the interplay between these dark matter halos and the baryonic matter they host.
• Although statistical relations can be used to approximate how massive a galaxy's halo is, very few individual galaxies have direct measurements of their halo masses.
• We present a method to directly estimate the total mass of a galaxy's dark halo using its system of globular clusters.