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

ANDRÉS E. PIATTI

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2018 vol. 478 p. 784 - 790

0035-8711

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) has recently been found toharbour more than two hundred per cent increase of its known cluster population.We provide here with solid evidence that such an unprecedented number of clusterscould be largely overestimated. On the one hand, the fully-automatic procedureused to identify such an enormous cluster candidate sample did not recover $sim$ 50 per cent, in average, of the known relatively bright clusters located in the SMC main body. On the other hand, the number of newcluster candidates per time unit as a function of time results noticeablydifferent to the intrinsic SMC cluster frequency (CF), which should not bethe 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 theeffects 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 alsodepends on the position in the galaxy. The cluster dissolutionresults higher as the concentrationof galaxy mass increases or external tidal forces are present.