1996A&A...312...49M

Dwarf galaxies are thought to be one of the building elements of spiral galaxies like the Milky Way, adding their globular clusters (GCs) to the halo when they merge. However, nearby dwarf elliptical galaxies have few or no GCs, complicating the study of their contribution in the context of halo formation. In order to improve on the statistics, we have constructed a master-dE galaxy by combining the data from several well studied dEs in the Local Group, scaling the projected distances in units of core radius. Using this master dE, we address the following basic questions: Are there halos of GCs around dEs? If so, are they flattened in a way similar to the host galaxies or are they more spherical? The answers to the above questions might give some clues about the formation of galaxies. We also examine the metallicity distribution of the GC system of this master dE galaxy. Using this information, we argue that the metal-rich globular cluster Ter 7 is unlikely to be a member of the recently discovered Sgr dwarf galaxy.