Open AccessNew insights on the bursting formation of star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud
Author(s) -
Piatti Andrés E.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society: letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.067
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1745-3933
pISSN - 1745-3925
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-3933.2011.01139.x
Subject(s) - large magellanic cloud , astrophysics , milky way , physics , photometry (optics) , star cluster , cluster (spacecraft) , star formation , population , astronomy , galaxy , stars , demography , computer science , sociology , programming language
We present the results on the age estimates of 36 Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) clusters obtained for the first time from CCD Washington CT 1 T 2 photometry. By using the ( T 1 , C − T 1 ) and ( T 1 , T 1 − T 2 ) diagrams, we estimated ages for the cluster sample using the δ T 1 index. We confirm that the studied cluster sample belong to the ∼2 Gyr bursting formation epoch of the LMC. Furthermore, when rebuiling the cluster age distribution – taken into account the estimated age errors – we found that the number of clusters with ages between 1 and 3 Gyr now doubles that of the known bursting cluster population, which suggests that the tidal interaction between both Magellanic Clouds and, perhaps, also the Milky Way, was more stronger than expected.