HST Observations of Spiral Galaxy Bulges



I am currently involved in a transatlantic collaboration including Massimo Stiavelli (STScI), Marcella Carollo (JHU), Tim de Zeeuw (Leiden) and Herwig Dejonghe (Ghent). We have WFPC2 data for 75 galaxies and NICMOS data for 80 galaxies, of which some were also observed with WFPC2. We are using these data to better understand the formation of spiral galaxy bulges. I am involved with the NICMOS data reduction and analysis. At the present time reduced images are available. Some of these are available online here. We hope to have submitted two papers on nuclear cusp slopes and central compact sources, respectively, by early January 1999. More details will appear here when available.

We are now following this up with ground-based near-infrared and optical broad band UBVRIJH observations of a significant fraction of these galaxies in order to look at stellar populations in the disks and compare them to stellar populations in the bulge as found with the HST data.


Last updated November 12 1998
E-mail me [email protected] for any suggestions
Sterrenkundig Observatorium