OB Stellar Associations in the Large Magellanic Cloud: Survey of young stellar systems

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0304019

From: Dimitrios Gouliermis <horus@mailbox.gr>

Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 09:50:04 GMT   (228kb)

Authors:
D. Gouliermis (Sternwarte Bonn),
M. Kontizas (University of Athens),
E. Kontizas (National Observatory of Athens),
R. Korakitis (National Technical University of Athens)

The method developed by Gouliermis et al. (2000, Paper I), for the detection
and classification of stellar systems in the LMC, was used for the
identification of stellar associations and open clusters in the central area of
the LMC. This method was applied on the stellar catalog produced from a scanned
1.2m UK Schmidt Telescope Plate in U with a field of view almost 6.5 deg x 6.5
deg, centered on the Bar of this galaxy. The survey of the identified systems
is presented here followed by the results of the investigation on their spatial
distribution and their structural parameters, as were estimated according to
our proposed methodology in Paper I. The detected open clusters and stellar
associations show to form large filamentary structures, which are often
connected with the loci of HI shells. The derived mean size of the stellar
associations in this survey was found to agree with the average size found
previously by other authors, for stellar associations in different galaxies.
This common size of about 80 pc might represent a universal scale for the star
formation process, whereas the parameter correlations of the detected loose
systems support the distinction between open clusters and stellar associations.

References and citations for this submission:

SLAC-SPIRES HEP (refers to ,
cited by, arXiv reformatted)