Tidal Tails in Interacting Galaxies: Formation of Compact Stellar Structures

Details Tidal Tails in Interacting Galaxies: Formation of Compact Stellar Structures Tidal Tails in Interacting Galaxies: Formation of Compact Stellar Structures

2009-08-29

arxiv.org/abs/0908.4308v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

To appear in the Proceedings of the Galaxy Wars: Stellar Populations and Star Formation in Interacting Galaxies Conference

Scientific paper

We have used V- and I- band images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to identify compact stellar clusters within the tidal tails of twelve different interacting galaxies. The seventeen tails within our sample span a physical parameter space of HI/stellar masses, tail pressure and density through their diversity of tail lengths, optical brightnesses, mass ratios, HI column densities, stage on the Toomre sequence, and tail kinematics. Our preliminary findings in this study indicate that star cluster demographics of the tidal tail environment are compatible with the current understanding of star cluster formation in quiescent systems, possibly only needing changes in certain parameters or normalization of the Schechter cluster initial mass function (CIMF) to replicate what we observe in color-magnitude diagrams and a brightest absolute magnitude -- log N plot.

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