Astron. Astrophys. 347, 455-472 (1999)

6. Conclusions

We derived the parameters for five GCs near the galactic center in a uniform manner, employing a new calibration of methods which relate structures in the CMDs with the parameters. Taking into account the differential reddening and correcting the CMDs for it leads to more accurately determined parameters and a decreasing absolute reddening. There might be a systematic effect on distances, if the differential reddening is not taken care of.

With the - method we present a accurate way to estimate differentially metallicities of metal-rich GCs. Especially it might prove useful for surveys of clusters in V, V-I, as their CMDs only need to contain the HB and turnover of the AGB/RGB.

The metallicities of our program clusters all lie in the range of the clusters constituting the classical disk-system of GCs in the Milky Way. However, different criteria defining subgroups of the GC-system partly lead to differing results. Most of the metal-rich GCs seem to belong to a bar/bulge-structure, and only a minority could clearly be addressed as `disk'-clusters. So the classical disk-system is more likely to be a mixture between a halo- and bulge-component.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1999

Online publication: June 30, 1999
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