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[53.10] Metallicity Distributions of Globular Clusters in Elliptical Galaxies from NICMOS and WFPC2 Observations

E.A. Ajhar (NOAO/KPNO), D. Geisler (Universidad de Concepci\'{o}n), J. Elias (NOAO/KPNO), D. Hoard (NOAO/CTIO)

We present Hubble Space Telescope\/ observations of four elliptical galaxies out to the distance of the Coma cluster. We recently acquired four single orbit pointings of each of the four galaxies using the F160W filter with NICMOS to cover most of the Planetary Camera field of archival WFPC2 V-band images of the same galaxies. The V{-}H color index yields sensitive metallicity distributions of the globular clusters systems (GCSs), and it is about three times as sensitive as the V{-}I color index with a low sensitivity to age variations. We expect the precision of these metallicities to be as good as 0.2~dex.

In addition to the GCS metallicity distributions, the H-band observations of the two ellipticals in Coma provide sufficient signal-to-noise to provide good measurements of their H-band surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) amplitudes. We present a preliminary distance to the Coma cluster from the H-band SBF measurements of the two galaxies and briefly discuss its implications on the Hubble constant.

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