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arXiv 1807.08765astro-ph.GA
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六个邻近星系核星团的恒星星族和恒星形成历史

Stellar populations and star formation histories of the nuclear star clusters in six nearby galaxies

Nikolay Kacharov, Nadine Neumayer, Anil C. Seth, Michele Cappellari, Richard McDermid, C. Jakob Walcher, Torsten Böker

摘要:

宇宙中的大多数螺旋星系和椭圆星系在其中心拥有非常密集和紧凑的恒星系统,称为核星团(NSC)。在这项工作中,我们研究了恒星质量介于$2$和$8\times10^9~{\rm M_{\odot}}$(四个晚型螺旋和两个早型)之间的六个邻近星系的NSC的恒星星族和恒星形成历史(SFH)的高分辨率光谱。我们的观测是用VLT的X-射手摄谱仪进行的。我们利用经验的简单恒星布居(SSP)模型网格来拟合复合恒星星族的数据和恢复的SFH的核。我们发现,所有晚型星系的核都经历了一个延长的SFH,而两个早型星系的NSCs与SSP一致。晚型星系样本中的NSC似乎已经形成了它们的恒星质量的一个重要部分,比$10$ Gyr更早,而两个早型星系中的NSC令人惊讶地年轻。比$100$ Myr年轻的恒星存在于至少两个核中:NGC 247和NGC 7793,在NGC 300的NSC中有一些年轻恒星形成的证据。螺旋星系NGC 247和NGC 300的NSC与\in原位恒星形成的时间延长相一致,金属丰度从$\sim-1.5$ dex开始逐渐富集,超过$10$ Gyr,在几百万年前达到超太阳值。NGC 3621在早期宇宙中似乎已经非常富含金属,NGC 7793为我们提供了一个非常复杂的SFH,可能由来自不同环境的各种大质量星团合并而成。

英文摘要:

The majority of spiral and elliptical galaxies in the Universe host very dense and compact stellar systems at their centres known as nuclear star clusters (NSCs). In this work we study the stellar populations and star formation histories (SFH) of the NSCs of six nearby galaxies with stellar masses ranging between $2$ and $8\times10^9~{\rm M_{\odot}}$ (four late-type spirals and two early-types) with high resolution spectroscopy. Our observations are taken with the X-Shooter spectrograph at the VLT. We make use of an empirical simple stellar population (SSP) model grid to fit composite stellar populations to the data and recover the SFHs of the nuclei. We find that the nuclei of all late-type galaxies experienced a prolonged SFH, while the NSCs of the two early-types are consistent with SSPs. The NSCs in the late-type galaxies sample appear to have formed a significant fraction of their stellar mass already more than $10$ Gyr ago, while the NSCs in the two early-type galaxies are surprisingly younger. Stars younger than $100$ Myr are present in at least two nuclei: NGC 247 and NGC 7793, with some evidence for young star formation in NGC 300's NSC. The NSCs of the spirals NGC 247 and NGC 300 are consistent with prolonged \in situ star formation with a gradual metallicity enrichment from $\sim-1.5$ dex more than $10$ Gyr ago, reaching super-Solar values few hundred Myr ago. NGC 3621 appears to be very metal rich already in the early Universe and NGC 7793 presents us with a very complex SFH, likely dominated by merging of various massive star clusters coming from different environments.

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