Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21915124p&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #151.24
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We study the young massive (104 solar mass) star cluster NGC 3603 in the Galaxy with HST deep photometry. The membership of stars is determined by relative proper motions based on two epoch WFPC2 data. The radially varying mass function of the members shows significant mass segregation ranging from slopes of Gamma=-0.26±0.32 in the inner 5'' to Gamma=-1.49±0.33 in the outermost annulus (15''--20''). The mass segregation is confirmed using the minimum spanning tree technique, which reveals mass segregation down to 5 solar masses. Both analyses show that the mass segregation in NGC 3603 is dependent on stellar mass, such that more massive stars tend to be more mass-segregated than their lower-mass counterparts. Despite the young age (1 Myr) for the main-sequence (MS) stars, we find a possible age spread of up to 3 Myr for pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars in the core and an even larger age spread up to 30 Myr among the PMS stars in the outskirts of the cluster. Since the outer part of NGC 3603 is dominated by molecular clouds, we computed the pixel-to-pixel distribution of the color excess, E(B - V)g, of the gas associated with this cluster from its Halpha/Paschenβ flux ratio using WFC3 images. At the assumed distance of 6.9 kpc, the resulting median color excess within 1 pc from the cluster center is E(B - V)g=1.51 ± 0.04 mag. Outside the cluster (at r > 1 pc), the color excess is seen to increase with cluster-centric distance toward both north and south, reaching a value of about 2.2 mag at r=2 pc from the cluster center. We are currently establishing a conversion from gas to stellar reddening, aiming at correcting individual MS and PMS stars for reddening in the WFC3 field of view and achieve an accurate age determination of the cluster.
Allison Richard
Altmann Martin
Grebel Eva Katharina
Pang Xiaoying
Pasquali Anna
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