On the star cluster frequency in the Large Magellanic Cloud

A.E. PIATTI

Bol. Asociación Argentina de Astronomía

BAAA

Año: 2013 vol. 56 p. 273 - 276

1669-9521

              Using an updated database of star clusters in the Large Mag-ellanic Cloud (LMC), we study the variations of the star cluster frequencyin terms of their spatial distributions. We considered the collection of re-gions analyzed by Harris & Zaritsky (2009, AJ, 138, 1243) in order tobuild individual star cluster frequencies. The resulting curves, tracedwith cluster mass cutoffs in order to assure a 50% completeness level,show that the oldest star clusters are not isotropically distributed, whilethose youngest (∼ 107 yr) exhibit a complex pattern. 30 Doradus resultsto be the region with the highest relative frequency of young star clus-ters in the galaxy. We also obtained modeled cluster frequencies fromthe known star formation rates for the different LMC regions. Whencomparing them to the observed ones, we find that there exist a generalagreement, particularly for ages smaller than 3 Gyr. A detailed versionof this work can be seen in Piatti (2014, MNRAS, 437, 1646).