A Hubble Space Telescope Census of Nuclear Star Clusters in Late-Type Spiral Galaxies. II. Cluster Sizes and Structural Parameter Correlations

By T. Böker, M. Sarzi, D. McLaughlin, R. P. van der Marel, Hans-Walter Rix, Luis C. Ho, J. Shields. 2003

180 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the structural properties of nuclear star clusters in late-type spiral galaxies. More specifically, we fit analytical models to Hubble Space Telescope images of 39 nuclear clusters in order to determine their effective radii after correction for the instrumental point-spread function. We use the results of this analysis to compare the luminosities and sizes of nuclear star clusters to those of other ellipsoidal stellar systems, in particular the Milky Way globular clusters. Our nuclear clusters have a median effective radius of e = 3.5 pc, with 50% of the sample falling in the range 2.4 pc ≤ re ≤ 5.0 pc. This narrow size distribution is statistically indistinguishable from that of Galactic globular clusters, even though the nuclear clusters are, on average, 4 mag brighter than the old globular clusters. We discuss some possible interpretations of this result. From a comparison of nuclear cluster luminosities with various properties of their host galaxies, we confirm that more luminous galaxies harbor more luminous nuclear clusters. It remains unclear whether this correlation mainly reflects the influence of galaxy size, mass, and/or star formation rate. Since the brighter galaxies in our sample typically have stellar disks with a higher central surface brightness, nuclear cluster luminosity also correlates with this property of their hosts. On the other hand, we find no evidence for a correlation between the presence of a nuclear star cluster and the presence of a large-scale stellar bar.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Nuclear star clusters (2009, methodology): “This approach has been applied both to one-dimensional surface brightness profiles (e.g., Böker et al. 2002; Côté et al. 2006) and two-dimensional images of the NSC (e.g., Böker et al. 2004; Turner et al. 2012; Georgiev and Böker 2014; Spengler et al. 2017).”
Stellar Populations in the Nuclei of Late-Type Spiral Galaxies (2006, background): “Typical sizes are less than 5 pc (see e.g. Böker et al. 2004, hereafter B04).”
Masses and scaling relations for nuclear star clusters, and their co-existence with central black holes (2016, unknown): “…Durrell 1997; Carollo et al. 1998; Geha et al. 2002; Lotz et al. 2004; Côté et al. 2006; Turner et al. 2012; den Brok et al. 2014) and late-type galaxies (e.g. Böker et al. 2002, 2004; Balcells et al. 2007b,a; Seth et al. 2006; Georgiev et al. 2009a; Georgiev & Böker 2014; Carson et al. 2015).”
Black hole growth through hierarchical black hole mergers in dense star clusters: implications for gravitational wave detections (2018, background): “Nuclear star clusters (NCs) are the most massive and densest clusters observed in the local universe (Carollo et al. 1997; Böker et al. 2004; Côté et al. 2006).”
A Fundamental Relation between Compact Stellar Nuclei, Supermassive Black Holes, and Their Host Galaxies (2006, background): “About 50-70% of late-type galaxies observed by HST contain a distinct nuclear star cluster (Carollo, Stiavelli & Mack 1998; Matthews et al 1999; Böker et al. 2002, 2004; Balcells et al. 2003), while a recent HST survey of 100 galaxies in the Virgo Cluster has detected nuclei in a comparable…”
MERGING BLACK HOLE BINARIES IN GALACTIC NUCLEI: IMPLICATIONS FOR ADVANCED-LIGO DETECTIONS (2016, background): “…of the GC system for the galaxy, at least in the Milky Way, and are the densest and most massive star clusters observed in the local universe (e.g., Böker et al. 2004; Côté et al. 2006), representing therefore a natural environment where dynamical processes can efficiently lead to the formation…”
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The Coincidence of Nuclear Star Clusters and Active Galactic Nuclei (2008, background): “Although correlations between NC and galaxy luminosities or masses have been shown for samples of galaxies of a single type (Carollo et al. 1998; Böker et al. 2004; Côté et al. 2006; Rossa et al. 2006; Ferrarese et al. 2006; Wehner & Harris 2006), this is the first time they have been compared…”
DISSIPATION AND EXTRA LIGHT IN GALACTIC NUCLEI. II. “CUSP” ELLIPTICALS (2008, background): “…AND EXTRA LIGHT Many spiral galaxies and dwarf spheroidals show a central excess in their light profiles associated with dense stellar nuclei (nuclear star clusters) (Phillips et al. 1996; Carollo et al. 1997, 1998; Carollo 1999; Matthews et al. 1999; Böker et al. 2002, 2004; Seth et al. 2006).”
Towards a physical model of dust tori in Active Galactic Nuclei (2005, background): “It is known that many spiral galaxies harbor young nuclear star clusters (e.g. Gallimore & Matthews 2003; Walcher et al. 2004; Böker et al. 2002, 2004).”
THE NUCLEUS OF THE SAGITTARIUS DSPH GALAXY AND M54: A WINDOW ON THE PROCESS OF GALAXY NUCLEATION (2008, background): “• An HST study of a large sample of Sa-Sd galaxies by Böker et al. (2004) found that a similarly high fraction of stellar nuclei is found also among these late type spirals, fn ≃ 77%.”
Near-Infrared and Star-forming Properties of Local Luminous Infrared Galaxies (2006, background): “The typical luminosities of the nuclear star clusters in late type spiral galaxies are in the range 106− 107 L⊙ (Böker et al. 2004 and references therein), similar to those of the so-called super star clusters, and more luminous galaxies tend to harbor more luminous nuclear clusters.”
STRUCTURE AND FORMATION OF ELLIPTICAL AND SPHEROIDAL GALAXIES (2008, background): “In late-type galaxies, nuclear absolute magnitudes correlate with total magnitudes, but only weakly (Carollo, Stiavelli, & Mack 1998; Böker et al. 2004).”
How do massive black holes get their gas (2009, background): “This results in the formation of an extremely massive nuclear star cluster, with a mass of ∼109 M inside the central ∼10–20 pc – a factor of at least ∼10 larger than observed nuclear star clusters (Böker et al. 2004; Côté et al. 2006; Ferrarese et al. 2006a).”
Masses of Star Clusters in the Nuclei of Bulgeless Spiral Galaxies (2004, background): “While the effective radii (∼ 5 pc, Böker et al. 2004, hereafter B04) are comparable to globular clusters, the luminosities exceed those of the most luminous Milky Way globular clusters by up to 2 orders of magnitude.”
THE NEXT GENERATION VIRGO CLUSTER SURVEY (NGVS). I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SURVEY (2012, background): “…galaxies contain structurally distinct stellar components in their cores.44 This is true for galaxies across the Hubble sequence (Carollo et al. 1998; Böker et al. 2002, 2004; Walcher et al. 2005, 2006; Seth et al. 2008) and along the luminosity function (e.g., Côté et al. 2006; Turner et al.…”