Spectral scans of the nuclear bulge of the Galaxy - Comparison with other galaxies

Scanner methods are used to make a quantitative spectrophotometric comparison between the integrated light of three areas of the nuclear bulge of the Galaxy and that of similar regions of other galaxies. The corrections required to reduce the observed narrow-band magnitudes for both the bulge areas and the other stellar systems to comparable intrinsic quantities are outlined. Absorption-feature indices are derived, and the final results for the bulge areas are compared with dereddened magnitudes for nine galaxies and two halo globular clusters. The integrated radiation from the nuclear bulge of the Galaxy in the areas examined is found to be representative of bulge populations in general. It is suggested that detailed information on resolved stars near the center of the Galaxy may be applied with increased confidence to models of other systems, for which only the composite radiation is available for analysis.