ABSTRACT We use the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury survey data set to perform spatially resolved measurements of star cluster formation efficiency (Γ), the fraction of stellar mass formed in ...long-lived star clusters. We use robust star formation history and cluster parameter constraints, obtained through color-magnitude diagram analysis of resolved stellar populations, to study Andromeda's cluster and field populations over the last ∼300 Myr. We measure Γ of 4%-8% for young, 10-100 Myr-old populations in M31. We find that cluster formation efficiency varies systematically across the M31 disk, consistent with variations in mid-plane pressure. These Γ measurements expand the range of well-studied galactic environments, providing precise constraints in an H i-dominated, low-intensity star formation environment. Spatially resolved results from M31 are broadly consistent with previous trends observed on galaxy-integrated scales, where Γ increases with increasing star formation rate surface density ( SFR). However, we can explain observed scatter in the relation and attain better agreement between observations and theoretical models if we account for environmental variations in gas depletion time (τdep) when modeling Γ, accounting for the qualitative shift in star formation behavior when transitioning from a H2-dominated to a H i-dominated interstellar medium. We also demonstrate that Γ measurements in high SFR starburst systems are well-explained by τdep-dependent fiducial Γ models.
The extended main-sequence turn offs (eMSTOs) of several young to intermediate age clusters are examined in the Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way. We explore the effects of extended star formation ...(eSF) and a range of stellar rotation rates on the behavior of the color-magnitude diagram, paying particular attention to the MSTO. We create synthetic stellar populations based on MESA stellar models to simulate observed Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia star cluster data. We model the effect of rotation as a nonparametric distribution, allowing for maximum flexibility. In our models the slow rotators comprise the blueward, and fast rotators the redward portion of the eMSTO. We simulate data under three scenarios: nonrotating eSF, a range of rotation rates with a single age, and a combination of age and rotation effects. We find that two of the five clusters (the youngest and oldest) favor an age spread, but these also achieve the overall worst fits of all clusters. The other three clusters show comparable statistical evidence between rotation and an age spread. In all five cases, a rotation-rate distribution alone is capable of qualitatively matching the observed eMSTO structure. In future work, we aim to compare our predicted V sin i with observations in order to better constrain the physics related to stellar rotation.
Abstract
We present the final legacy version of stellar photometry for the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT) survey. We have reprocessed all of the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field ...Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys near-ultraviolet (F275W, F336W), optical (F475W, F814W), and near-infrared (F110W, F160W) imaging from the PHAT survey using an improved method that optimized the survey depth and chip-gap coverage by including all overlapping exposures in all bands in the photometry. An additional improvement was gained through the use of charge transfer efficiency (CTE)–corrected input images, which provide more complete star finding as well as more reliable photometry for the NUV bands, which had no CTE correction in the previous version of the PHAT photometry. While this method requires significantly more computing resources and time than earlier versions where the photometry was performed on individual pointings, it results in smaller systematic instrumental completeness variations as demonstrated by cleaner maps in stellar density, and it results in optimal constraints on stellar fluxes in all bands from the survey data. Our resulting catalog has 138 million stars, 18% more than the previous catalog, with lower density regions gaining as much as 40% more stars. The new catalog produces nearly seamless population maps that show relatively well-mixed distributions for populations associated with ages older than 1–2 Gyr and highly structured distributions for the younger populations.
Abstract
We examine the three-dimensional structure and dust extinction properties in a ∼200 pc × 100 pc region in the southwest bar of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). We model a deep Hubble Space ...Telescope optical color–magnitude diagram (CMD) of red clump and red giant branch stars in order to infer the dust extinction and galactic structure. We model the distance distribution of the stellar component with a Gaussian and find a centroid distance of 65.2 kpc (distance modulus
μ
= 19.07 mag) with an FWHM ≈ 11.3 kpc. This large extent along the line of sight reproduces results from previous studies using variable stars and red clump stars. Additionally, we find an offset between the stellar and dust distributions, with the dust on the near side relative to the stars by 3.22
kpc, resulting in a 73% reddened fraction of stars. Modeling the dust layer with a log-normal
A
V
distribution indicates a mean extinction 〈
A
V
〉 = 0.41 ± 0.09 mag. We also calculate
A
V
/
N
H
= 3.2–4.2 × 10
−23
mag cm
2
H
−1
, which is significantly lower than the Milky Way value but is comparable to previous SMC dust-to-gas ratio measurements. Our results yield the first joint dust extinction and 3D geometry properties in a key region in the SMC. This study demonstrates that CMD modeling can be a powerful tool to simultaneously constrain dust extinction and geometry properties in nearby galaxies.
Abstract We measure the high-mass stellar initial mass function (IMF) from resolved stars in M33 young stellar clusters. Leveraging the Hubble Space Telescope’s high resolving power, we fully model ...the IMF probabilistically. We first model the optical color–magnitude diagram of each cluster to constrain its power-law slope Γ, marginalized over other cluster parameters in the fit (e.g., cluster age, mass, and radius). We then probabilistically model the distribution of mass function (MF) slopes for a highly strict cluster sample of nine clusters more massive than log(Mass/ M ⊙ ) = 3.6; above this mass, all clusters have well-populated main sequences of massive stars and should have accurate recovery of their MF slopes, based on extensive tests with artificial clusters. We find that the ensemble IMF is best described by a mean high-mass slope of Γ ¯ = 1.49 ± 0.18 , with an intrinsic scatter of σ Γ 2 = 0.02 0.00 + 0.16 , consistent with a universal IMF. We find no dependence of the IMF on environmental impacts such as the local star formation rate (SFR) or galactocentric radius within M33, which serves as a proxy for metallicity. This Γ ¯ measurement is consistent with similar measurements in M31, despite M33 having a much higher SFR intensity. While this measurement is formally consistent with the canonical Kroupa (Γ = 1.30) IMF, as well as the Salpeter (Γ = 1.35) value, it is the second Local Group cluster sample to show evidence for a somewhat steeper high-mass IMF slope. We explore the impacts a steeper IMF slope has on a number of astronomical subfields.
Inositol hexakisphosphate (IP6) is an assembly cofactor for HIV-1. We report here that IP6 is also used for assembly of Rous sarcoma virus (RSV), a retrovirus from a different genus. IP6 is ~100-fold ...more potent at promoting RSV mature capsid protein (CA) assembly than observed for HIV-1 and removal of IP6 in cells reduces infectivity by 100-fold. Here, visualized by cryo-electron tomography and subtomogram averaging, mature capsid-like particles show an IP6-like density in the CA hexamer, coordinated by rings of six lysines and six arginines. Phosphate and IP6 have opposing effects on CA in vitro assembly, inducing formation of T = 1 icosahedrons and tubes, respectively, implying that phosphate promotes pentamer and IP6 hexamer formation. Subtomogram averaging and classification optimized for analysis of pleomorphic retrovirus particles reveal that the heterogeneity of mature RSV CA polyhedrons results from an unexpected, intrinsic CA hexamer flexibility. In contrast, the CA pentamer forms rigid units organizing the local architecture. These different features of hexamers and pentamers determine the structural mechanism to form CA polyhedrons of variable shape in mature RSV particles.
We explore the stellar structure of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) disk using data from the Survey of the MAgellanic Stellar History and the Dark Energy Survey. We detect a ring-like stellar ...overdensity in the red clump star count map at a radius of ∼6° (∼5.2 kpc at the LMC distance) that is continuous over ∼270° in position angle and is only limited by the current data coverage. The overdensity shows an amplitude up to 2.5 times higher than that of the underlying smooth disk. This structure might be related to the multiple arms found by de Vaucouleurs. We find that the overdensity shows spatial correlation with intermediate-age star clusters, but not with young (<1 Gyr) main-sequence stars, indicating the stellar populations associated with the overdensity are intermediate in age or older. Our findings on the LMC overdensity can be explained by either of two distinct formation mechanisms of a ring-like overdensity: (1) the overdensity formed out of an asymmetric one-armed spiral wrapping around the LMC main body, which is induced by repeated encounters with the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) over the last Gyr, or (2) the overdensity formed very recently as a tidal response to a direct collision with the SMC. Although the measured properties of the overdensity alone cannot distinguish between the two candidate scenarios, the consistency with both scenarios suggests that the ring-like overdensity is likely a product of tidal interaction with the SMC, but not with the Milky Way halo.
Abstract
We construct a catalog of star clusters from Hubble Space Telescope images of the inner disk of the Triangulum Galaxy (M33) using image classifications collected by the Local Group Cluster ...Search, a citizen science project hosted on the Zooniverse platform. We identify 1214 star clusters within the Hubble Space Telescope imaging footprint of the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury: Triangulum Extended Region (PHATTER) survey. Comparing this catalog to existing compilations in the literature, 68% of the clusters are newly identified. The final catalog includes multiband aperture photometry and fits for cluster properties via integrated light spectral energy distribution fitting. The cluster catalog’s 50% completeness limit is ∼1500
M
☉
at an age of 100 Myr, as derived from comprehensive synthetic cluster tests.
ABSTRACT We construct a stellar cluster catalog for the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT) survey using image classifications collected from the Andromeda Project citizen science website. ...We identify 2753 clusters and 2270 background galaxies within ∼0.5 deg2 of PHAT imaging searched, or ∼400 kpc2 in deprojected area at the distance of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). These identifications result from 1.82 million classifications of ∼20,000 individual images (totaling ∼7 gigapixels) by tens of thousands of volunteers. We show that our crowd-sourced approach, which collects >80 classifications per image, provides a robust, repeatable method of cluster identification. The high spatial resolution Hubble Space Telescope images resolve individual stars in each cluster and are instrumental in the factor of ∼6 increase in the number of clusters known within the survey footprint. We measure integrated photometry in six filter passbands, ranging from the near-UV to the near-IR. PHAT clusters span a range of ∼8 magnitudes in F475W (g-band) luminosity, equivalent to ∼4 decades in cluster mass. We perform catalog completeness analysis using >3000 synthetic cluster simulations to determine robust detection limits and demonstrate that the catalog is 50% complete down to ∼500 for ages <100 Myr. We include catalogs of clusters, background galaxies, remaining unselected candidates, and synthetic cluster simulations, making all information publicly available to the community. The catalog published here serves as the definitive base data product for PHAT cluster science, providing a census of star clusters in an spiral galaxy with unmatched sensitivity and quality.
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