Bibcode
Skillman, E. D.; Hidalgo, S. L.; Weisz, Daniel R.; Monelli, M.; Gallart, C.; Aparicio, A.; Bernard, Edouard J.; Boylan-Kolchin, Michael; Cassisi, Santi; Cole, Andrew A.; Dolphin, Andrew E.; Ferguson, Henry C.; Mayer, Lucio; Navarro, Julio F.; Stetson, Peter B.; Tolstoy, Eline
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 786, Issue 1, article id. 44, 12 pp. (2014).
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2014
Journal
Citations
77
Refereed citations
65
Description
We present an analysis of the star formation history (SFH) of a field
near the half-light radius in the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy IC
1613 based on deep Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys
imaging. Our observations reach the oldest main sequence turn-off,
allowing a time resolution at the oldest ages of ~1 Gyr. Our analysis
shows that the SFH of the observed field in IC 1613 is consistent with
being constant over the entire lifetime of the galaxy. These
observations rule out an early dominant episode of star formation in IC
1613. We compare the SFH of IC 1613 with expectations from cosmological
models. Since most of the mass is in place at early times for low-mass
halos, a naive expectation is that most of the star formation should
have taken place at early times. Models in which star formation follows
mass accretion result in too many stars formed early and gas mass
fractions that are too low today (the "over-cooling problem"). The depth
of the present photometry of IC 1613 shows that, at a resolution of ~1
Gyr, the star formation rate is consistent with being constant, at even
the earliest times, which is difficult to achieve in models where star
formation follows mass assembly.
Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope,
obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by
the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under
NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with
program 10505.
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