We present the results of our mid-infrared (MIR) observations of distant clusters of galaxies with AKARI. The wide-eld of view of IRC/AKARI (10'X10') is ideally suited for studying dust-obscured star-formation (SF) activity of galaxies along the cosmic web in the distant universe. We performed a deep and wide-field 15 μm (rest-frame  8 μm) imaging observation of the RXJ1716+6708 cluster (z = 0:81) with IRC. We find that 15 m-detected cluster member galaxies (with total infrared luminosities of LIR & 1011L⊙) are most preferentially located in the cluster outskirt regions, whilst such IR-luminous galaxies avoid the cluster centre. Our Hα follow-up study of this field conrmed that a significant fraction of 15 μm-detected cluster galaxies are heavily obscured by dust (with AHα>3 mag in extreme cases). The environment of such dusty star-burst galaxies coincides with the place where we see a sharp "break" of the colour-density relation, suggesting an important link between dust-obscured SF activity and environmental quenching. We also report the discovery of a new cluster candidate around a radio galaxy at z = 1:52 (4C 65.22), where we obtained one of the deepest IRC imaging datasets with all the nine filters at 2-24 μm. This field will provide us with the final, excellent laboratory for studying the dust-enshrouded SF activity in galaxies along the cosmic web at the critical epoch of cluster galaxy evolution with AKARI.

We present a new tool for studying the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of galaxies and star clusters, BINARY STAR TO FIT (BS2fit). A key feature of this tool is that it takes the eects of binaries, stellar rotation and star formation history into account. It can be used to determine many parameters, including distance, extinction, binary fraction, rotational star fraction, and star formation history. Because more factors are included than in previous tools, BS2fit can potentially give new insight into the properties of galaxies and clusters. One can contact the authors for cooperation and helps via.

We present population synthesis models for the calcium II triplet (CaT), currently the most popular metallicity indicator, based on high-resolution empirical spectral energy distributions (SEDs). Our new CaT models, based on empirical SEDs, show a linear correlation below [Fe/H] ~ -0.5, but the linear relation breaks down in the metal-rich regime by converging to the same equivalent width. This relation shows good agreement with the observed CaT of globular clusters (GCs) in NGC 1407 and the Milky Way. However, a model based on theoretical SEDs does not show this feature of the CaT and fails to reproduce observed GCs in the metal-rich regime. This linear relation may cause inaccurate metallicity determination for metal-rich stellar populations. We have also conrmed that the effect of horizontal- branch stars on the CaT is almost negligible in models based on both empirical and theoretical SEDs. Our new empirical model may explain the difference between the color distributions and CaT distributions of GCs in various early-type galaxies. Based on our model, we claim that the CaT is not a good metallicity indicator for simple stellar populations in the metal-rich regime.

We present a study searching for globular cluster systems (GCSs) of two face-on low surface bright- ness galaxies (LSBGs), UGC 5981 and UGC 6614. Based on HSTWFPC2 images of F555Wand F814W filters, we detect 12 and 18 GC candidates for UGC 5981 and UGC 6614, respectively. Although these two LSBGs have very different bulge properties, they have very similar specific frequencies (SN) of 0.1. However, SN ~ 0.1 is quite small even for their late morphological types, albeit within errors. This suggests that LSBGs have had star formation histories lacking dominant initial starburst events while accumulating their stellar masses through sporadic star formation activities.