Sizing the star cluster population of the Large Magellanic Cloud

ANDRÉS E. PIATTI

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2018 vol. 475 p. 2553 - 2559

0035-8711

The number of star clusters that populate the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) at deprojected distances < 4 deg has been recently found to benearly double the known size of the system. Because of the unprecedented consequences of this outcome in our knowledge of the LMC cluster formation and dissolution histories,we closely revisited such a compilation of objects and found that only~ 35 per cent of the previously known catalogued clusters has beenincluded. The remaining entries are likely related to stellar overdensitiesof the LMC composite star field, because there is a remarkable enhancementof objects with assigned ages older than log(t yr-1) ~ 9.4,which contrasts with the existence of the LMC cluster age gap; the assumption of acluster formation rate similar to that of the LMC star field does nothelp to conciliate so large amount of clusters either; and nearly50 per cent of them come from cluster search procedures known toproduce more than 90 per cent of false detections. The lack of furtheranalyses to confirm the physical reality as genuine star clustersof the identified overdensities also glooms those results. We support that the actual size of the LMC main body cluster population  is close to that previously known.