Fornax 3D project. Globular clusters

Spectroscopic studies of GC systems are often limited to the outskirts of galaxies, where GCs stand out against the galaxy background and serve as bright tracers of galaxy assembly. In this work we use the capabilities of the Multi Unit Explorer Spectrograph (MUSE) to extract a spectroscopic sample of 722 GCs in the inner regions (<3Reff) of 32 galaxies in the Fornax cluster.

These galaxies were observed as part of the Fornax 3D project, a MUSE survey that targets early and late-type galaxies within the virial radius of Fornax. After accounting for the galaxy background in the GC spectra, we extracted line-of-sight velocities and determined metallicities of a subsample of 238 GCs. We found signatures of rotation within GC systems and comparing the GC kinematics and that of the stellar body shows that the angular momentum of the GC system reflects that of the stars, confirming the usefulness of GCs as kinematic tracers.