View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by CERN Document Server A Near-Infrared Photometric Survey of Metal-Poor Inner Spheroid Globular Clusters and Nearby Bulge Fields T. J. Davidge 1 Canadian Gemini Office, Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, National Research Council of Canada, 5071 W. Saanich Road, Victoria, B. C. Canada V8X 4M6 email:
[email protected] ABSTRACT Images recorded through J; H; K; 2:2µm continuum, and CO filters have been obtained of a sample of metal-poor ([Fe/H] 1:3) globular clusters ≤− in the inner spheroid of the Galaxy. The shape and color of the upper giant branch on the (K; J K) color-magnitude diagram (CMD), combined with − the K brightness of the giant branch tip, are used to estimate the metallicity, reddening, and distance of each cluster. CO indices are used to identify bulge stars, which will bias metallicity and distance estimates if not culled from the data. The distances and reddenings derived from these data are consistent with published values, although there are exceptions. The reddening-corrected distance modulus of the Galactic Center, based on the Carney et al. (1992, ApJ, 386, 663) HB brightness calibration, is estimated to be 14:9 0:1. The mean ± upper giant branch CO index shows cluster-to-cluster scatter that (1) is larger than expected from the uncertainties in the photometric calibration, and (2) is consistent with a dispersion in CNO abundances comparable to that measured among halo stars. The luminosity functions (LFs) of upper giant branch stars in the program clusters tend to be steeper than those in the halo clusters NGC 288, NGC 362, and NGC 7089.