Stellar Populations in the Dwarf Galaxy NGC59

Massive elliptical galaxies are thought to be an end state of galaxy evolution, built up by hierarchical mergers of lower mass systems. This lower mass progenitor population will not all have merged by the present day. Here we investigate the stellar populations of a nearby, earlytype (dS0) galaxy NGC59, which may represent a relic left over from the early formation era. Its velocity dispersion is only s =37 km s−1, making it one of the lowest mass ETGs to be studied for its composite stellar populations. Star formation is still taking place within NGC59. We fit single age, single metallicity stellar population (SSP) and composite star formation history (SFH) models to find out about the properties of the bulk of the stars. RSS, long-slit spectra in the blue (PG3000 grating) and red (PG1300 grating) regions are combined to give wavelength coverage from 3500−6100 Å