HOW SIMILAR ARE THE GLOBULAR CLUSTERS IN DIFFERENT GALAXIES ?

Recent observations of globular clusters in several galaxies show that the mean globular cluster luminosity lm is nearly independent of parent galaxy luminosity LG over more than three orders of magnitude in LG. These results do not depend strongly on the adopted distance scale parameter H0, and are at least roughly consistent with the Fall-Rees theoretical models for the origin of globular clusters. The implications for modeling of halo formation, and for the use of globular clusters as "standard candles", are briefly discussed.