What do star clusters in Stephan's Quintet tell us?

  • Sohn, Ju-Bee (Astronomy Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Lim, Sung-Soon (Astronomy Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Lee, Myung-Gyoon (Astronomy Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University)
  • Published : 2010.10.06

Abstract

We investigate star clusters in the Stephan's Quintet using Wide Field Camera 3 of the Hubble Space Telescope and three filters (F438W, F606W, F814W). Stephan's Quintet located at ~ 85 Mpc, so most star clusters are seen like point source even in HST image. We perform the Point Spread Funtion fitting photometry to find star clusters. Then we have selected 749 star cluster candidates by visual inspection. Usinng simple steallr population models (Bruzual & Charlot, 2003), we estimate ages of these star clusters. Many young star clusters found in tidal features of NGC 7318 and NGC 7319. Also star clusters in the shocked region of NGC7318 have younger age than those in NGC 7319 tidal tail. These result implies interaction which distrupt NGC 7319 first, and collision between NGC 7318 A/B occurred. In contrast, old star clusters are mainly located in NGC 7317 and in the center of other galaxies. Implications of these result will be discussed.

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