A. Vazdekis et al., A NEW CHEMO-EVOLUTIONARY POPULATION SYNTHESIS MODEL FOR EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES .2. OBSERVATIONS AND RESULTS, The Astrophysical journal. Supplement series, 111(1), 1997, pp. 203-232
We present the results of applying a new chemo-evolutionary stellar po
pulation model, developed in a previous paper, to new high-quality obs
ervational data of the nuclear regions of two representative elliptica
l galaxies and the bulge of the Sombrero galaxy. Here we fit in detail
similar to 20 absorption lines and six optical and near-infrared colo
rs, following two approaches: fitting a single-age, single-metallicity
model and fitting our full chemical evolutionary model. We find that
all the iron lines are weaker than the best-fitting models predict, in
dicating that the iron abundance is anomalous and deficient. We also f
ind that the Ca I index at 4227 Angstrom is much lower than predicted
by the models. We can obtain good fits for all the other lines and obs
erved colors with models of old and metal-rich stellar populations and
can show that the observed radial gradients are due to metallicity de
creasing outward. We find that good fits are obtained both with fully
evolutionary models and with single-age, single-metallicity models. Th
is is due to the fact that in the evolutionary model more than 80% of
the stars form within 1.5 Gyr after the formation of the galaxies. The
fact that slightly better fits are obtained with evolutionary models
indicates that these galaxies contain a small spread in metallicity.