Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...211.5825a&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #58.25; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.837
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
To search for evidence of extragalactic natal star clusters, we observed a total of 28 star-forming galaxies in K- and X-bands with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) and the Very Large Array (VLA). Spectral indices α, where Sν ∝ να, determine whether a radio source is a potentially embedded star cluster. The ionizing flux of massive embedded stars powers the dominant thermal free-free emission of those sources with α > -0.1. Based on the radio emission flux densities we can infer the ionizing flux of the star cluster and determine how many equivalent O7.5 V stars are necessary to produce the observed radio flux densities.
Within the 1σ errors of our spectral indices, we detected only 8 galaxies with natal star formation regions out of the 28 selected for our sample. Because we selected all the galaxies in our sample based upon their likelihood of harboring young star formation, the dearth of massive natal star formation regions suggests that this evolutionary stage of the massive clusters is very short-lived. The largest clusters we detected have an equivalent of 104 O7.5 V stars and the smallest only have an equivalent of 102 stars, thus these clusters are not massive super-star clusters (SSCs), which generally contain >104 type O stars. Therefore, our observations help us to understand the relationship between star forming environments and the mass of the resulting stellar clusters.
Aversa Alan
Brogan Crystal L.
Goss Miller
Johnson Kelsey E.
Pisano Daniel J.
No associations
LandOfFree
A Radio Search for Natal Star Clusters in Nearby Star-Forming Galaxies does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with A Radio Search for Natal Star Clusters in Nearby Star-Forming Galaxies, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and A Radio Search for Natal Star Clusters in Nearby Star-Forming Galaxies will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1478053