期刊
ASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL
卷 127, 期 3, 页码 1531-1544出版社
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS
DOI: 10.1086/381953
关键词
galaxies : evolution; galaxies : individual (Small Magellanic Cloud); galaxies : stellar content; Magellanic Clouds
We present the spatially resolved star formation and chemical enrichment history of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) across the entire central 4degrees x 4.degrees5 area of the main body, based on UBVI photometry from our Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey. We find that ( 1) approximately 50% of the stars that ever formed in the SMC formed prior to 8.4 Gyr ago ( z > 1.2 for WMAP cosmology); (2) the SMC formed relatively few stars between 8.4 and 3 Gyr ago; ( 3) there was a rise in the mean star formation rate during the most recent 3 Gyr punctuated by bursts'' at ages of 2.5, 0.4, and 0.06 Gyr; ( 4) the bursts at 2.5 and 0.4 Gyr are temporally coincident with past perigalactic passages of the SMC with the Milky Way; ( 5) there is preliminary evidence for a large-scale annular structure in the 2.5 Gyr burst; and ( 6) the chemical enrichment history derived from our analysis is in agreement with the age-metallicity relation of the SMC's star clusters. Consistent interpretation of the data required an ad hoc correction of 0.1 - 0.2 mag to the B - V colors of 25% of the stars; the cause of this anomaly is unknown, but we show that it does not strongly influence our results.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据