The Star Formation History of the Small Magellanic Cloud

By J. Harris, Dennis Zaritsky. 2003

316 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the spatially resolved star formation and chemical enrichment history of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) across the entire central 4° × 4.°5 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.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/14ecb454f5fb1d95ec837e61e7122e988d2ce43c

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Citations in the corpus

MESA ISOCHRONES AND STELLAR TRACKS (MIST). I. SOLAR-SCALED MODELS (2016, methodology): “We first convolve the isochrones with star formation and metallicity histories (SMC; Harris & Zaritsky 2004, LMC; Harris & Zaritsky 2009) to generate composite CMDs in various filters, including the effects of circumstellar dust around AGB stars that can strongly influence the flux at longer…”
SURVEYING THE AGENTS OF GALAXY EVOLUTION IN THE TIDALLY STRIPPED, LOW METALLICITY SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD (SAGE-SMC). I. OVERVIEW (2011, background): “The SMC has significant metallicity and age variations in the evolved star population over its full field of view (Harris & Zaritsky 2004; Cioni et al. 2006).”
The Detailed Star Formation History in the Spheroid, Outer Disk, and Tidal Stream of the Andromeda Galaxy (2006, background): “These difficulties are a continuing plague for studies of star formation histories in complex populations (e.g., Skillman et al. 2003; Harris & Zaritsky 2004).”
The stellar masses of 25 000 galaxies at 0.2 ≤ z ≤ 1.0 estimated by the COMBO-17 survey (2006, background): “Detailed observations of resolved stellar populations (e.g., Rocha-Pinto et al. 2000; Harris & Zaritsky 2004) and integrated spectra (e.g., Trager et al. 2000; Proctor & Sansom 2002; Panter et al. 2004) show that most galaxies have formed stars over extended periods — oftentimes over almost a…”
THE STAR FORMATION HISTORY OF THE LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD (2009, methodology): “In Harris & Zaritsky (2004) and Zaritsky & Harris (2004), we used this context to interpret the SFH solution for the SMC; in particular, we noted coincidences between peaks in the SMC’s SFR and past perigalactic interactions with the LMC and Milky Way.”
Delay-time distribution of core-collapse supernovae with late events resulting from binary interaction (2017, background): “The original study of Maoz & Badenes (2010) was limited by the spatial and time resolution of the SFH map of the Magellanic Clouds by Harris & Zaritsky (2004, 2009).”
Observational Clues to the Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae (2013, background): “The stellar age distributions are found by comparing the densities of the resolved stars in color-magnitude diagrams to model stellar isochrones (Harris & Zaritsky 2004, 2009).”
THE STATE OF THE GAS AND THE RELATION BETWEEN GAS AND STAR FORMATION AT LOW METALLICITY: THE SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD (2011, methodology): “This is consistent with the findings of Caplan et al. (1996), who used the Balmer decrement technique to obtain a typical extinction AHα ∼ 0.3 mag toward bright SMC H II regions (see also Harris & Zaritsky 2004, for a discussion of extinction based on fitting color–magnitude diagrams).”
Be/X-ray binaries (2011, background): “This implies that either there has been a significant delay between the encounter of the SMC and LMC and the onset of star formation, or that subsequent waves of star formation have given rise to these Be/X-ray binaries (Harris & Zaritsky 2004).”
Evolution of asymptotic giant branch stars. I. Updated synthetic TP-AGB models and their basic calibration (2007, methodology): “For the SMC, we used the global SFR as determined by Harris & Zaritsky (2004) from the Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey.”
Evolution of Stars and Stellar Populations (2005, background): “and SMC (from [92] and [99]).”
CONVERTING FROM 3.6 AND 4.5 μm FLUXES TO STELLAR MASS (2012, methodology): “However, one could extend this work to the SMC and to more distant galaxies for which resolved CMDs exist to establish the magnitude of the metallicity dependence.”
The Origin of the Magellanic Stream and Its Leading Arm (2007, methodology): “A close encounter at ∼2–2.5 Gyr would be consistent with the bursts in the star formation rate seen in the star formation histories of both MCs (SmeckerHane et al. 2002; Harris & Zaritsky 2004).”
SURVEYING THE AGENTS OF GALAXY EVOLUTION IN THE TIDALLY STRIPPED, LOW METALLICITY SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD (SAGE-SMC). II. COOL EVOLVED STARS (2011, background): “RSG stars show a clumpier distribution than the AGB stars, likely due to recent star formation (e.g., Harris & Zaritsky 2004; Gieles et al. 2008).”
Are the Magellanic Clouds on Their First Passage about the Milky Way? (2007, background): “A rise in the SMC’s mean SFR within the past 3 Gyr has also been inferred by Harris & Zaritsky (2004), who describe the recent star formation rate as highly irregular with bursts of star formation occurring at 2.5, 0.4, and 0.06 Gyr ago.”
Spitzer Survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud: Surveying the Agents of a Galaxy’s Evolution (SAGE). I. Overview and Initial Results (2006, unknown): “…the perspective of galaxy evolution, the LMC is uniquely suited to study how the agents of evolution, the ISM and stars, interact as a whole in a galaxy that has undergone tidal interactions with other galaxies, the MW and the SMC (Zaritsky &Harris 2004; Harris & Zaritsky 2004; Bekki & Chiba 2005).”