We conduct a comprehensive numerical study of the orbital dependence of harassment on early-type dwarfs consisting of 168 different orbits within a realistic, Virgo-like cluster, varying in eccentricity and pericentre distance. We find harassment is only effective at stripping stars or truncating their stellar disks for orbits that enter deep into the cluster core. Comparing to the orbital distribution in cosmological simulations, we find that the majority of the orbits (more than three quarters) result in no stellar mass loss. We also study the effects on the radial profiles of the globular cluster systems of early-type dwarfs. We find these are significantly altered only if harassment is very strong. This suggests that perhaps most early-type dwarfs in clusters such as Virgo have not suffered any tidal stripping of stars or globular clusters due to harassment, as these components are safely embedded deep within their dark matter halo. We demonstrate that this result is actually consistent with an earlier study of harassment of dwarf galaxies, despite the apparent contradiction. Those few dwarf models that do suffer stellar stripping are found out to the virial radius of the cluster at redshift=0, which mixes them in with less strongly harassed galaxies. However when placed on phase-space diagrams, strongly harassed galaxies are found offset to lower velocities compared to weakly harassed galaxies. This remains true in a cosmological simulation, even when halos have a wide range of masses and concentrations. Thus phase-space diagrams may be a useful tool for determining the relative likelihood that galaxies have been strongly or weakly harassed.

Aims. We present the main results of an imaging survey of possible young massive clusters (YMC) in M 31 performed with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), with the aim of estimating their age and their mass. We obtained shallow (to B ∼ 25) photometry of individual stars in 19 clusters (of the 20 targets of the survey). We present the images and color magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of all of our targets. Methods. Point spread function fitting photometry of individual stars was obtained for all the WFPC2 images of the target clusters, and the completeness of the final samples was estimated using extensive sets of artificial stars experiments. The reddening, age, and metallicity of the clusters were estimated by comparing the observed CMDs and luminosity functions (LFs) with theoretical models. Stellar masses were estimated by comparison with theoretical models in the log(Age) vs. absolute integrated magnitude plane, using ages estimated from our CMDs and integrated J, H, K magnitudes from 2MASS-6X. Results. Nineteen of the twenty surveyed candidates were confirmed to be real star clusters, while one turned out to be a bright star. Three of the clusters were found not to be good YMC candidates from newly available integrated spectroscopy and were in fact found to be old from their CMD. Of the remaining sixteen clusters, fourteen have ages between 25 Myr and 280 Myr, two have older ages than 500 Myr (lower limits). By including ten other YMC with HST photometry from the literature, we assembled a sample of 25 clusters younger than 1 Gyr, with mass ranging from 0.6 × 10 4 M to 6 × 10 4 M , with an average of ∼3 × 10 4 M . Our estimates of ages and masses well agree with recent independent studies based on integrated spectra. Conclusions. The clusters considered here are confirmed to have masses significantly higher than Galactic open clusters (OC) in the same age range. Our analysis indicates that YMCs are relatively common in all the largest star-forming galaxies of the Local Group, while the lack of known YMC older than 20 Myr in the Milky Way may stem from selection effects.

Aims. We introduce our imaging survey of possible young massive globular clusters in M31 performed with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We obtained shallow (to B ∼ 25) photometry of individual stars in 20 candidate clusters. We present here details of the data reduction pipeline that is being applied to all the survey data and describe its application to the brightest among our targets, van den Bergh 0 (VdB0), taken as a test case. Methods. Point spread function fitting photometry of individual stars was obtained for all the WFPC2 images of VdB0 and the completeness of the final samples was estimated using an extensive set of artificial stars experiments. The reddening, the age and the metallicity of the cluster were estimated by comparing the observed color magnitude diagram (CMD) with theoretical isochrones. Structural parameters were obtained from model-fitting to the intensity profiles measured within circular apertures on the WFPC2 images. Results. Under the most conservative assumptions, the stellar mass of VdB0 is M > 2.4 × 10 4 M , but our best estimates lie in the range 4−9 × 10 4 M . The CMD of VdB0 is best reproduced by models having solar metallicity and age 25 Myr. Ages less than 12 Myr and greater than 60 Myr are clearly ruled out by the available data. The cluster has a remarkable number of red super giants ( > ∼ 18) and a CMD very similar to Large Magellanic Cloud clusters usually classified as young globulars such as NGC 1850, for example. Conclusions. VdB0 is significantly brighter ( > ∼ 1 mag) than Galactic open clusters of similar age. Its present-day mass and half-light radius (r h = 7.4 pc) are more typical of faint globular clusters than of open clusters. However, given its position within the disk of M31, it is expected to be destroyed by dynamical effects, in particular by encounters with giant molecular clouds, within the next ∼4 Gyr.

Deep observations of the dwarf elliptical (dE) galaxy NGC 1396 (M V = −16.60, Mass ∼ 4 × 10 8 M ), located in the Fornax cluster, have been performed with the VLT/ MUSE spectrograph in the wavelength region from 4750 − 9350 Å. In this paper we present a stellar population analysis studying chemical abundances, the star formation history (SFH) and the stellar initial mass function (IMF) as a function of galacto-centric distance. Different, independent ways to analyse the stellar populations result in a luminosity-weighted age of ∼ 6 Gyr and a metallicity [Fe/H]∼ −0.4, similar to other dEs of similar mass. We find unusually overabundant values of [Ca/Fe] ∼ +0.1, and under-abundant Sodium, with [Na/Fe] values around −0.1, while [Mg/Fe] is overabundant at all radii, increasing from ∼ +0.1 in the centre to ∼ +0.2 dex. We notice a significant metallicity and age gradient within this dwarf galaxy.To constrain the stellar IMF of NGC 1396, we find that the IMF of NGC 1396 is consistent with either a Kroupa-like or a top-heavy distribution, while a bottom-heavy IMF is firmly ruled out.An analysis of the abundance ratios, and a comparison with galaxies in the Local Group, shows that the chemical enrichment history of NGC 1396 is similar to the Galactic disc, with an extended star formation history. This would be the case if the galaxy originated from a LMC-sized dwarf galaxy progenitor, which would lose its gas while falling into the Fornax cluster.