2018/02/07 by Chengyuan Li, Licai Deng, Richard de Grijs +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Blue straggler #Cluster (spacecraft) #Globular cluster #Large Magellanic Cloud #Star cluster #Stars #Stellar collision #Stellar evolution #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aaad65
9 pages, 8 figures, ApJ accepted
arxiv created 2018/02/07 · openalex created_date 2018/02/23 · openalex publication_date 2018/03/20 · arxiv updated 2018/04/04 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract The bifurcated patterns in the color–magnitude diagrams of blue straggler stars (BSSs) have attracted significant attention. This type of special (but rare) pattern of two distinct blue straggler sequences is commonly interpreted as evidence that cluster core-collapse-driven stellar collisions are an efficient formation mechanism. Here, we report the detection of a bifurcated blue straggler distribution in a young Large Magellanic Cloud cluster, NGC 2173. Because of the cluster’s low central stellar number density and its young age, dynamical analysis shows that stellar collisions alone cannot explain the observed BSSs. Therefore, binary evolution is instead the most viable explanation of the origin of these BSSs. However, the reason why binary evolution would render the color–magnitude distribution of BSSs bifurcated remains unclear.