HUNTING FOR YOUNG DISPERSING STAR CLUSTERS IN IC 2574
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A and M University, College Station, TX 77843-4242 (United States)
- International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, CRAWLEY WA 6009 (Australia)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 (United States)
- Illumina, Inc., 25861 Industrial Blvd, Hayward, CA 94545 (United States)
Dissolving stellar groups are very difficult to detect using traditional surface photometry techniques. We have developed a method to find and characterize non-compact stellar systems in galaxies where the young stellar population can be spatially resolved. By carrying out photometry on individual stars, we are able to separate the luminous blue stellar population from the star field background. The locations of these stars are used to identify groups by applying the HOP algorithm, which are then characterized using color-magnitude and stellar density radial profiles to estimate age, size, density, and shape. We test the method on Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys archival images of IC 2574 and find 75 dispersed stellar groups. Of these, 20 highly dispersed groups are good candidates for dissolving systems. We find few compact systems with evidence of dissolution, potentially indicating that star formation in this galaxy occurs mostly in unbound clusters or groups. These systems indicate that the dispersion rate of groups and clusters in IC 2574 is at most 0.45 pc Myr{sup -1}. The location of the groups found with HOP correlate well with H I contour map features. However, they do not coincide with H I holes, suggesting that those holes were not created by star-forming regions.
- OSTI ID:
- 22089763
- Journal Information:
- Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online), Vol. 144, Issue 6; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1538-3881
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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