Star and Cluster Formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

A great burst of cluster formation increased the rate at which open clusters were formed in the Large Magellanic Cloud 3-5 Gyr ago by at least an order of magnitude. On the other hand the rate of star formation ~ 4 Gyr appears to have increased by a factor of only 2-4. This shows that the rate of cluster formation is not a good tracer of the rate at which stars are formed. Normalized to the same rate of star formation, the Large Cloud is presently forming / 600 times more star clusters than the Local Group dwarf irregular IC 1613. The high rate of cluster formation in merging gas-rich galaxies suggests that strong shocks might favor the formation of clusters.

To be published in ApJ Letters 1998 November 1

References in corpus (3)

• A Search for Old Star Clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• WFPC2 Observations of Star Clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. II. The Oldest Star Clusters in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Stellar Populations in Three Outer Fields of the LMC

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Chemical abundances in LMC stellar populations I. The Inner disk sample Based on observations collected at the VLT UT2 telescope
• AGB stars in the Magellanic Clouds. II. The rate of star formation across the LMC
• The Metallicity Distribution Function of Red Giants in the LMC
• Near-Infrared Imaging of the Central Regions of Metal-Poor Inner Spheroid Globular Clusters
• Globular Clusters in Blue Compact Galaxies as Tracers of the Starburst History