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THE ANTENNAE GALAXIES (NGC 4038/4039) REVISITED: ADVANCED CAMERA FOR SURVEYS AND NICMOS OBSERVATIONS OF A PROTOTYPICAL MERGER

2010; Institute of Physics; Volume: 140; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1088/0004-6256/140/1/75

1538-3881

Bradley C. Whitmore, Rupali Chandar, F. Schweizer, Barry Rothberg, Claus Leitherer, Marcia Rieke, G. H. Rieke, William P. Blair, S. Mengel, A. Alonso‐Herrero,

Astronomy and Astrophysical Research

The Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) have been used to obtain new Hubble Space Telescope images of NGC 4038/4039 ("The Antennae"). These new observations allow us to better differentiate compact star clusters from individual stars, based on both size and color. We use this ability to extend the cluster luminosity function (LF) by approximately 2 mag over our previous WFPC2 results, and find that it continues as a single power law, dN/dL ∝ Lα with α = −2.13 ± 0.07, down to the observational limit of MV ≈ −7. Similarly, the mass function (MF) is a single power law dN/dM ∝ Mβ with β = −2.10 ± 0.20 for clusters with ages 3 mag.