English

Structural Parameters of Seven SMC Intermediate-Age and Old Star Clusters

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2015-05-14 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We present structural parameters for the seven intermediate-age and old star clusters NGC121, Lindsay 1, Kron 3, NGC339, NGC416, Lindsay 38, and NGC419 in the Small Magellanic Cloud. We fit King profiles and Elson, Fall, and Freeman profiles to both surface-brightness and star count data taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. Clusters older than 1 Gyr show a spread in cluster core radii that increases with age, while the youngest clusters have relatively compact cores. No evidence for post core collapse clusters was found. We find no correlation between core radius and distance from the SMC center, although consistent with other studies of dwarf galaxies, some relatively old and massive clusters have low densities. The oldest SMC star cluster, the only globular NGC121, is the most elliptical object of the studied clusters. No correlation is seen between ellipticity and distance from the SMC center. The structures of these massive intermediate-age (1-8 Gyr) SMC star clusters thus appear to primarily result from internal evolutionary processes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0909.1329,
  title  = {Structural Parameters of Seven SMC Intermediate-Age and Old Star Clusters},
  author = {Katharina Glatt and Eva K. Grebel and John S. Gallagher III. and Antonella Nota and Elena Sabbi and Marco Sirianni and Gisella Clementini and Gary Da Costa and Monica Tosi and Daniel Harbeck and Andreas Koch and Andrea Kayser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0909.1329},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

16 pages, 13 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:43:37.241Z