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Nature of a shell of young stars in the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud

David Martinez-Delgado A. Katherina Vivas Eva K. Grebel Carme Gallart 1 Adriano Pieres Cameron P. M. Bell Paul Zivick Bertrand Lemasle L. Clifton Johnson Julio A. Carballo-Bello Noelia E. D. Noel Maria-Rosa L. Cioni Yumi Choi Gurtina Besla Judy Schmidt Dennis Zaritsky 2 Robert A. Gruendl Mark Seibert 3 David Nidever Laura Monteagudo Mateo Monelli Bernhard Hubl Roeland van der Marel Fernando J. Ballesteros Guy Stringfellow Alistair Walker Robert Blum Eric F. Bell Blair C. Conn Knut Olsen Nicolas Martin 4 You-Hua Chu Laura Inno Thomas J. L. Boer Nitya Kallivayalil Michele de Leo Yuri Beletsky Ricardo R. Munoz David Martínez-Delgado Anna Katherina Vivas Eva Grebel Cameron Bell Lent Clifton Johnson Julio Carballo-Bello Noelia Noël Maria-Rosa Cioni Robert Gruendl Fernando Ballesteros 5 Eric Bell Blair Conn Thomas Boer Fabian Neyer Ricardo Muñoz
1 IAC - Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
2 University of Arizona
3 CALTECH - California Institute of Technology
4 ObAS - Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg
5 Brown Bear Foundation
Abstract : Understanding the evolutionary history of the Magellanic Clouds requires an in-depth exploration and characterization of the stellar content in their outer regions, which ultimately are key to tracing the epochs and nature of past interactions. We present new deep images of a shell-like over-density of stars in the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The shell, also detected in photographic plates dating back to the fifties, is located at ~1.9 degr from the center of the SMC in the north-east direction.The structure and stellar content of this feature were studied with multi-band, optical data from the Survey of the MAgellanic Stellar History (SMASH) carried out with the Dark Energy Camera on the Blanco Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. We also investigate the kinematic of the stars in the shell using the Gaia Data Release 2. The shell is composed of a young population with an age ~ 150 Myr, with no contribution from an old population. Thus, it is hard to explain its origin as the remnant of a tidally disrupted stellar system. The spatial distribution of the young main-sequence stars shows a rich sub-structure, with a spiral arm-like feature emanating from the main shell and a separated small arc of young stars close to the globular cluster NGC 362. We find that the absolute g-band magnitude of the shell is M_{g,shell} = -10.78+/- 0.02, with a surface brightness of mu_{g,shell} = 25.81+/- 0.01 mag/arcsec^{2}. We have not found any evidence that this feature is of tidal origin or a bright part of a spiral arm-like structure. Instead, we suggest that the shell formed in a recent star formation event, likely triggered by an interaction with the Large Magellanic Cloud and/or the Milky Way, ~150 Myr ago.
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https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02393414
Contributor : Nicolas Martin Connect in order to contact the contributor
Submitted on : Tuesday, August 31, 2021 - 3:35:21 PM
Last modification on : Monday, November 29, 2021 - 9:18:03 AM
Long-term archiving on: : Wednesday, December 1, 2021 - 9:38:32 PM

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David Martinez-Delgado, A. Katherina Vivas, Eva K. Grebel, Carme Gallart, Adriano Pieres, et al.. Nature of a shell of young stars in the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud. Astronomy and Astrophysics - A&A, EDP Sciences, 2019, 631, pp.A98. ⟨10.1051/0004-6361/201936021⟩. ⟨hal-02393414⟩

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