Bibcode
DOI
Gallart, Carme; Stetson, Peter B.; Meschin, Ingrid P.; Pont, Frederic; Hardy, Eduardo
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 682, Issue 2, pp. L89-L92.
Advertised on:
8
2008
Journal
Citations
58
Refereed citations
45
Description
From the analysis of the color-magnitude diagrams and color functions of
four wide LMC fields located from ~=2 to 6 kpc from the kinematic center
of the LMC we present evidence that, while the oldest population is
coeval in all fields, the age of the youngest component of the dominant
stellar population gradually increases with galactocentric distance,
from currently active star formation in a field at 2.3°, to 100 Myr,
0.8 Gyr, and 1.5 Gyr in fields at 4.0°, 5.5°, and 7.1°,
respectively. This outside-in quenching of the star formation in the LMC
disk is correlated with the decreasing H I column density (which is
<=2 × 1020 cm-2 in the two outermost
fields with little or no current star formation). Other work in the
literature hints at similar behavior in the stellar populations of
irregular galaxies and in M33. This is observational evidence against
the inside-out disk formation scenario in low-mass spirals and irregular
galaxies. Alternatively, it could be that the age distribution with
radius results from interplay between the evolution with time of the
star-forming area of the LMC and the subsequent outward migration of the
stars.
Related projects
Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
The general aim of the project is to research the structure, evolutionary history and formation of galaxies through the study of their resolved stellar populations, both from photometry and spectroscopy. The group research concentrates in the most nearby objects, namely the Local Group galaxies including the Milky Way and M33 under the hypothesis
Martín
López Corredoira