Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Galaxy Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2009-10-05
2010IAUS..266..433K
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Galaxy Astrophysics
To appear in the proceedings of IAU Symposium 266: "Star Clusters: Basic Galactic Building Blocks Throughout Time And Space",
Scientific paper
10.1017/S1743921309991621
Star clusters are found in all sorts of environments and their formation and evolution is inextricably linked to the star formation process. Their eventual destruction can result from a number of factors at different times, but the process can be investigated as a whole through the study of the cluster age distribution. Observations of populous cluster samples reveal a distribution following a power law of index approximately -1. In this work we use M33 as a test case to examine the age distribution of an archetypal cluster population and show that it is in fact the evolving shape of the mass detection limit that defines this trend. That is to say, any magnitude-limited sample will appear to follow a dN/dt=1/t, while cutting the sample according to mass gives rise to a composite structure, perhaps implying a dependence of the cluster disruption process on mass. In the context of this framework, we examine different models of cluster disruption from both theoretical and observational standpoints.
Bastian Nate
Gieles Mark
Konstantopoulos Iraklis S.
Lamers Henny J. G. L. M.
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