The real population of star clusters in the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud

We report results on star clusters located in the South-Eastern half of the Large Magellanic (LMC) bar from WashingtonCT1photom-etry. Using appropriate kernel density estimators we detected 73 star cluster candidates, three of which do not show any detectabletrace of star cluster sequences in their...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Piatti, Andres Eduardo
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:Argentina
Institución:Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Repositorio:CONICET Digital (CONICET)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ri.conicet.gov.ar:11336/80738
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/11336/80738
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:CLUSTERS
MAGELLANIC CLOUDS
TECHNIQUES: PHOTOMETRIC
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1.3
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1
Descripción
Sumario:We report results on star clusters located in the South-Eastern half of the Large Magellanic (LMC) bar from WashingtonCT1photom-etry. Using appropriate kernel density estimators we detected 73 star cluster candidates, three of which do not show any detectabletrace of star cluster sequences in their colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs). We did not detect other 38 previously catalogued clusters,which could not be recognized when visually inspecting theCandT1images either; the distribution of stars in their respective fieldsdo not resemble that of an stellar aggregate. They represent∼33 per cent of all catalogued objects located within the analysed LMCbar field. From matching theoretical isochrones to the cluster CMDs cleaned from field star contamination, we derived ages in therange 7.2<log(tyr−1)<10.1. As far as we are aware, this is the first time homogeneous age estimates based on resolved stellar photometry are obtained for most of the studied clusters. We built the cluster frequency (CF) for the surveyed area, and found that themajor star cluster formation activity has taken place during the period log(tyr−1)∼8.0 – 9.0. Since∼100 Myr ago, clusters have beenformed during few bursting formation episodes. When comparing the observed CF to that recovered from the star formation rate wefound noticeable differences, which suggests that field star and star cluster formation histories could have been significantly different.