A global view of stellar populations in M82

Abstract

Abstract We present photometric and spectroscopic studies of the stellar content of M82, including the resolved halo stellar population and the halo globular clusters. M82 is a nearby peculiar galaxy that recently went through a close encounter with its more massive companion, M81. As a result, M82 has a high star formation activity and unusual stellar content. We studied the resolved stellar population using the imaging data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data archive. Then, their metallicities were analyzed to understand a global view of the stellar populations in M82. We found that the old stellar population in M82 shows typical characteristics for a disk galaxy, while the young stellar population shows a sign of disruption as a result of the recent interactions.