Abundance Gradient in the Disk of NGC 300

The structure of the outer parts of galactic disks and the nature of their stellar populations are fundamental to our understanding of the formation and evolution of spiral galaxies. Ages and metallicity distributions of stars in the outermost regions of spiral disks provide important clues on how and when the disks are assembled. In our earlier work we trace the extended stellar disk of NGC 300 out to a radius of at least 10 disk scale lengths, with no sign of truncation. We now revisit the outer disk of NGC 300 in order to derive the metallicity distribution of the faint stellar population in its outskirts. We find that predominantly old stellar population in the outer disk exhibits a negative abundance gradient - as predicted by the chemical evolution models - out to about 10 kpc, followed by the metallicity plateau in the outermost disk.