Issue |
A&A
Volume 670, February 2023
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A11 | |
Number of page(s) | 11 | |
Section | Galactic structure, stellar clusters and populations | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202244288 | |
Published online | 27 January 2023 |
Dynamical state of the globular clusters Rup 106 and IC 4499
1
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
e-mail: gbeccari@eso.org
2
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Augusto Righi”, Universitá degli Studi di Bologna, Via Gobetti 93/2, 40129 Bologna, Italy
3
INAF-Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory Bologna, Via Gobetti 93/3, 40129 Bologna, Italy
Received:
16
June
2022
Accepted:
12
November
2022
The dynamical evolution of globular clusters is theoretically described by a series of well-known events typical of N-body systems. Still, the identification of observational signatures able to empirically describe the stage of dynamical evolution of a stellar system with a density typical of a globular cluster represents a challenge. In this paper, we study the dynamical age of the globular clusters Rup 106 and IC 4499. To this aim, we study the radial distribution of the blue straggler stars (BSSs) via the A+ parameter and of the slope of the main sequence mass function. Both tracers show that Rup 106 and IC 4499 are dynamically young clusters where dynamical friction has just started to segregate massive stars towards their respective centres. Furthermore, we observe that the BSSs are more centrally concentrated in both clusters than the reference population. Similarly, we find that in both cases the slope of the mass function significantly decreases as a function of the cluster-centric distance. This result provides additional support for the use of the radial distribution of the BSSs as a powerful and observationally convenient indicator of the cluster dynamical age.
Key words: blue stragglers / globular clusters: individual: Rup 106 / globular clusters: individual: IC 4499 / stars: kinematics and dynamics
© The Authors 2023
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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