A Catalog of Globular Cluster Systems: What Determines the Size of a Galaxy's Globular Cluster Population?

Understand

We present a catalog of 422 galaxies with published measurements of their globular cluster (GC) populations.

• Of these, 248 are E galaxies, 93 are S0 galaxies, and 81 are spirals or irregulars.
• Among various correlations of the total number of GCs with other global galaxy properties, we find that N_GC correlates well though nonlinearly with the dynamical mass of the galaxy bulge M_dyn = 4 \sigma_e^2 R_e /G, where \sigma_e is the central velocity dispersion and R_e the effective radius of the galaxy light profile.
• We also present updated versions of the GC specific frequency S_N and specific mass S_M versus host galaxy luminosity and baryonic mass.