2017/12/27 by Andrés E. Piatti
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Cluster (spacecraft) #Demography #Galaxy #Large Magellanic Cloud #Physics #Population #Star cluster #Star formation #Stellar population #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stx3344
7 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
arxiv created 2017/12/27 · openalex publication_date 2017/12/28 · arxiv updated 2018/02/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The number of star clusters that populate the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) at deprojected distances <4 deg has been recently found to be nearly 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 have been included. The remaining entries are likely related to stellar overdensities of the LMC composite star field, because there is a remarkable enhancement of 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 a cluster formation rate similar to that of the LMC star field does not help to conciliate so large amount of clusters either; and nearly 50 per cent of them come from cluster search procedures known to produce more than 90 per cent of false detections. The lack of further analyses to confirm the physical reality as genuine star clusters of 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.