The Spitzer Survey of the Small Magellanic Cloud: S3MC Imaging and Photometry in the Mid- and Far-Infrared Wave Bands

By A. Bolatto, J. Simon, S. Stanimirović, J. V. van Loon, R. Shah, K. Venn, A. Leroy, K. Sandstrom, J. Jackson, F. Israel and 5 more. 2006

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We present the initial results from the Spitzer Survey of the Small Magellanic Cloud (S3MC), which imaged the star-forming body of the SMC in all seven MIPS and IRAC wave bands. We find that the F8/F24 ratio (an estimate of PAH abundance) has large spatial variations and takes a wide range of values that are unrelated to metallicity but anticorrelated with 24 μm brightness and F24/F70 ratio. This suggests that photodestruction is primarily responsible for the low abundance of PAHs observed in star-forming low-metallicity galaxies. We use the S3MC images to compile a photometric catalog of ~400,000 mid- and far-infrared point sources in the SMC. The sources detected at the longest wavelengths fall into four main categories: (1) bright 5.8 μm sources with very faint optical counterparts and very red mid-infrared colors ([5.8] - [8.0] > 1.2), which we identify as YSOs; (2) bright mid-infrared sources with mildly red colors (0.16 ≲ [5.8] - [8.0] < 0.6), identified as carbon stars; (3) bright mid-infrared sources with neutral colors and bright optical counterparts, corresponding to oxygen-rich evolved stars; and (4) unreddened early B stars (B3-O9) with a large 24 μm excess. This excess is reminiscent of debris disks and is detected in only a small fraction of these stars (≲5%). The majority of the brightest infrared point sources in the SMC fall into groups 1-3. We use this photometric information to produce a catalog of 282 bright YSOs in the SMC with a very low level of contamination (~7%).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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METALLICITY-DEPENDENT QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION AT HIGH REDSHIFT IN SMALL GALAXIES (2011, background): “…sensitive to the metallicity of the gas, occurring at a very different column density in the Milky Way, at Solar metallicity, than in the Small Magellanic Cloud, at ∼ 20% Solar metallicity (Tumlinson et al. 2002; Bolatto et al. 2007; Leroy et al. 2007; Krumholz et al. 2009b; Bolatto et al. 2011).”
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SURVEYING THE AGENTS OF GALAXY EVOLUTION IN THE TIDALLY STRIPPED, LOW METALLICITY SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD (SAGE-SMC). I. OVERVIEW (2011, methodology): “…dust in the Bar has very weak aromatic features and has UV extinction with a steep UV rise and no 2175 Å bump, while the dust in the Wing shows MW-like UV extinction and aromatic features (Gordon & Clayton 1998; Li & Draine 2002; Gordon et al. 2003; Bolatto et al. 2007; Sandstrom et al. 2010).”
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Evolution of asymptotic giant branch stars. II. Optical to far-infrared isochrones with improved TP- (2007, methodology): “The data are taken directly from the SAGE and S3MC catalogs (Blum et al. 2006, and Bolatto et al. 2007, respectively), and hence correspond to objects that have counterparts in the Spitzer pass-bands.”
The global gas and dust budget of the Large Magellanic Cloud: AGB stars and supernovae, and the impact on the ISM evolution (2009, background): “We have obtained spectra of AGB stars (mainly carbon-rich stars) in the LMC and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) using the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS; Houck et al. 2004) on-board Spitzer (Matsuura et al. 2006; Sloan et al. 2006, 2008; Zijlstra et al. 2006; Lagadec et al. 2007; Wood et al. 2007; Leis”
A NEW CLASS OF LUMINOUS TRANSIENTS AND A FIRST CENSUS OF THEIR MASSIVE STELLAR PROGENITORS (2008, background): “In the catalog of Bolatto et al. (2007) for the SMC, we find a single source that satisfiesM4.”
THE ATOMIC-TO-MOLECULAR TRANSITION IN GALAXIES. II: H i AND H2 COLUMN DENSITIES (2008, methodology): “This survey differs from the SONG and THINGS data sets in that those surveys infer the presence of H2 via CO emission, whereas S3MC measures molecular hydrogen using measurements of dust from Spitzer combined with Hi measurements by Stanimirovic et al. (1999) and Stanimirović et al. (2004).”
NEW OPTICAL REDDENING MAPS OF THE LARGE AND SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUDS (2011, methodology): “…H II regions in the LMC (Davies et al. 1976; Book et al. 2008, 2009) and SMC (Davies et al. 1976; Bica & Schmitt 1995), with LMC CO maps, tracing molecular hydrogen clouds, by Fukui et al. (2008) and the Spitzer dust maps by Meixner et al. (2006) for the LMC and Bolatto et al. (2007) for the SMC.”
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