The Chemical Enrichment History of the Small Magellanic Cloud and Its Gradients

Abstract

We present stellar metallicities derived from Ca II triplet spectroscopy in over 350 red giant branch stars in 13 fields distributed in different positions in the SMC, ranging from $\sim$1\arcdeg\@ to $\sim$4\arcdeg\@ from its center. In the innermost fields the average metallicity is [Fe/H] $\sim -1$. This value decreases when we move away towards outermost regions. This is the first detection of a metallicity gradient in this galaxy. We show that the metallicity gradient is related to an age gradient, in the sense that more metal-rich stars, which are also younger, are concentrated in the central regions of the galaxy.

30 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomical Journal

References in corpus (5)

• The Chemical Enrichment History of the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The Infrared Ca II triplet as metallicity indicator
• Old Main-Sequence Turnoff Photometry in the Small Magellanic Cloud. I. Constraints on the Star Formation History in Different Fields
• Chemical evolution of the Small Magellanic Cloud based on planetary nebulae
• Three clusters of the SMC from ACS/WFC HST archive data: NGC 265, K~29 and NGC 290 and their fields

Cited by in corpus (43)

• The VMC Survey - XIV. First results on the look-back time star-formation rate tomography of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The dust production rate of AGB stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• Carbon and oxygen in HII regions of the Magellanic Clouds: abundance discrepancy and chemical evolution
• Multiple populations in the old and massive Small Magellanic Cloud globular cluster NGC121
• Prolate rotation and metallicity gradient in the transforming dwarf galaxy Phoenix
• Revealing the tidal scars of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Red Giants in the Small Magellanic Cloud. II. Metallicity Gradient and Age-Metallicity Relation
• Evidence for multiple populations in the intermediate age cluster Lindsay 1 in the SMC
• Photometric metallicity map of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Ca II Triplet Spectroscopy of Small Magellanic Cloud Red Giants. III. Abundances and Velocities for a Sample of 14 Clusters
• The VMC survey - XV. The Small Magellanic Cloud--Bridge connection history as traced by their star cluster populations
• The Magellanic Inter-Cloud Project (MAGIC) III: First spectroscopic evidence of a dwarf stripping a dwarf
• Chemical Signature of a Major Merger in the Early Formation of Small Magellanic Cloud
• Magellanic Mayhem: Metallicities and Motions
• Discovery of the Magellanic Stellar Stream Out to 100 Kiloparsecs
• Detailed chemical composition of classical Cepheids in the LMC cluster NGC 1866 and in the field of the SMC
• Evolution of dust and molecular hydrogen in the Magellanic System
• The Magellanic Edges Survey I. Description and First Results
• The chemical DNA of the Magellanic Clouds -- I. The chemical composition of 206 Small Magellanic Cloud red giant stars
• New Magellan Inamori Kyocera Echelle Observations of z<1.5 sub-damped Lyman-alpha systems
• Morphology and metallicity of the Small Magellanic Cloud using RRab stars
• The Most Metal-poor Stars in Omega Centauri (NGC 5139)
• The VMC survey -- XXXIX: Mapping metallicity trends in the Small Magellanic Cloud using near-infrared passbands
• Ca II Triplet Spectroscopy of Small Magellanic Cloud Red Giants. V. Abundances and Velocities for 12 Massive Clusters
• Young LMC clusters: the role of red supergiants and multiple stellar populations in their integrated light and CMDs
• Metallicities and ages for 35 star clusters and their surrounding fields in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• First Co-spatial Comparison of Stellar, Neutral-, and Ionized-gas Metallicities in a metal-rich galaxy: M83
• The beat Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds: an analysis from the EROS-2 database
• Ca II Triplet Spectroscopy of Small Magellanic Cloud Red Giants. VI. Analysis of chemical properties of the Main Body
• Short period variability in the globular cluster NGC 419 and the SMC field
• Multiwavelength Characterization of the High Mass X-ray Binary Population of M33
• Detection of ${}^7$Be II in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• A segmented period-luminosity relation for nearby extragalactic $\delta$ Scuti stars
• Astrophysical properties of newly discovered Magellanic Cloud star clusters
• Kinematics of stellar substructures in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Application of hydrostatic local thermodynamic equilibrium atmosphere models to interpretations of supersoft X-ray source spectra
• Origin of Ne Emission Line of Very Luminous Soft X-ray Transient MAXI J0158$-$744
• Strömgren photometric metallicity map of the Magellanic Cloud stars using Gaia DR3--XP spectra
• Revisiting the near infrared Calcium triplet as metallicity indicator
• The Small Magellanic Cloud through the lens of the James Webb Space Telescope : binaries and mass function within the galaxy outskirts
• The chemical DNA of the Magellanic Clouds V. R-process dominates neutron capture elements production in the oldest SMC stars
• The Chemical Enrichment History of the Magellanic Clouds Field Populations
• The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury: Triangulum Extended Region (PHATTER) II. The Spatially Resolved Recent Star Formation History of M33