  We present a study of the old globular cluster (GC) population of the dwarf
irregular galaxy NGC 1427A using multi-wavelength VLT observations in U, B, V,
I, H_alpha, J, H, and Ks bands under excellent observing conditions. We applied
color and size selection criteria to select old GC candidates and made use of
archival ACS images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope to reject
contaminating background sources and blended objects from the GC candidates'
list. The H_alpha observations were used to check for contamination due to
compact, highly reddened young star clusters whose colors and sizes could mimic
those of old GCs. After accounting for contamination we obtain a total number
of 38+/-8 GC candidates with colors consistent with an old (~10 Gyr) and
metal-poor (Z < 0.4xZ_solar) population as judged by simple stellar population
models. Our contamination analysis indicates that the density distribution of
GCs in the outskirts of the Fornax central cD galaxy NGC1399 may not be
spherically symmetric. We derive a present-day specific frequency S_N of
1.6+/-0.23 for NGC 1427A, a value significantly larger than what is observed in
the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxies and comparable with the values found
for the same galaxy types in the Virgo and Fornax clusters. Assuming a
universal globular cluster luminosity function turnover magnitude, we derive a
distance modulus to NGC 1427A of 31.01+/-0.21 mag which places it
3.2+/-2.5(statistic)+/-1.6(systematic) Mpc in front of the Fornax central cD
galaxy NGC 1399. The implications of this result for the relationship between
NGC 1427A and the cluster environment are briefly discussed.

Astrophysics