Towards a comprehensive knowledge of the star cluster population in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) has recently been found to harbour more than two hundred per cent increase of its known cluster population. We provide here with solid evidence that such an unprecedented number of clusters could be largely overestimated. On the one hand, the fully-automatic procedure used to identify such an enormous cluster candidate sample did not recover ~ 50 per cent, in average, of the known relatively bright clusters located in the SMC main body. On the other hand, the number of new cluster candidates per time unit as a function of time results noticeably different to the intrinsic SMC cluster frequency (CF), which should not be the case if these new detections were genuine physical systems. We additionally found that the SMC CF varies spatially, in such a way that it resembles an outside-in process coupled with the effects of a relatively recent interaction with the Large Magellanic Cloud. By assuming that clusters and field stars share the same formation history, we showed for the first time that the cluster dissolution rate also depends on the position in the galaxy. The cluster dissolution results higher as the concentration of galaxy mass increases or external tidal forces are present.

8 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Monthly Noticies of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• An Updated SMC and Magellanic Bridge Catalog of Star Clusters, Associations and Related Objects
• The Second Data Release of the Survey of the MAgellanic Stellar History (SMASH)
• Metallicity estimates of young clusters in the Magellanic Clouds from Stromgren photometry of supergiant stars
• Ca II Triplet Spectroscopy of Small Magellanic Cloud Red Giants. VI. Analysis of chemical properties of the Main Body
• Astrophysical properties of newly discovered Magellanic Cloud star clusters
• Kinematic distinction of the two subpopulations of X-ray pulsars
• Globular cluster candidates in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy