Catalogue of Large Magellanic Cloud star clusters observed in the Washington photometric system

¹ Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Nuncio Monseñor Sotero Sanz 100, Providencia, Santiago, Chile
e-mail: tpalma@astro.puc.cl
² Instituto de Astrofísica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, 782-0436 Macul, Santiago, Chile
³ Observatorio Astronómico, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Laprida 854, 5000 Córdoba, Argentina
⁴ Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Argentina
⁵ Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental (IATE), 922 Laprida, Córdoba, Argentina
⁶ Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Concepción, Casilla 160-C, Concepción, Chile

Received: 4 September 2015
Accepted: 17 November 2015

Abstract

Aims. The main goal of this study is to compile a catalogue of the fundamental parameters of a complete sample of 277 star clusters (SCs) of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) observed in the Washington photometric system. A set of 82 clusters was recently studied by our team.

Methods. All the clusters’ parameters such as radii, deprojected distances, reddenings, ages, and metallicities were obtained by applying essentially the same procedures, which are briefly described here. We used empirical cumulative distribution functions to examine age, metallicity and deprojected distance distributions for different cluster subsamples of the catalogue.

Results. Our new sample of 82 additional clusters represents about a 40% increase in the total number of LMC SCs observed to date in the Washington photometric system. In particular, we report here the fundamental parameters obtained for the first time for 42 of these clusters. We found that single LMC SCs are typically older than multiple SCs. Both single and multiple SCs exhibit asymmetrical distributions in log (age). We compared cluster ages derived through isochrone fittings obtained using different models of the Padova group. Although ages obtained using recent isochrones are consistent in general terms, we found that there is some disagreement in the obtained values and their uncertainties.