The Stellar Halo of the Spiral Galaxy NGC 1560
  We report on the detection of a stellar halo around NGC 1560, a 10^9 Mo
spiral galaxy member of the Maffei group. We obtained deep images in the r and
i bands using the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias in a field centered at ~ 3.7
arcmin (projected distance of 3.5 kpc) from the center of this galaxy. The
luminosity function and the CMD show a clear excess of stars with respect to
the expected foreground level at magnitudes fainter than the RGB tip at the
distance of NGC 1560. The color of the halo stars implies a metallicity of Z ~
Zo/50, while their counts correspond to a stellar mass of ~ 10^7 Mo in the
sampled region. Assuming a power law profile for the surface mass density of
the halo, our data suggest a total stellar mass of 10^8 Mo for the halo of NGC
1560.
