Issue |
A&A
Volume 690, October 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | L12 | |
Number of page(s) | 9 | |
Section | Letters to the Editor | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202451810 | |
Published online | 18 October 2024 |
Letter to the Editor
Old massive clusters (and a nuclear star cluster?) in the tidal tails of NGC 5238
1
INAF - Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, via Piero Gobetti 93/3, 40129 Bologna, Italy
2
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Via Frascati 33, 00078 Monteporzio Catone, Rome, Italy
3
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, Via Moiariello, 16, 80131 Napoli, Italy
4
Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
5
Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
6
ASI-Space Science Data Center, Via del Politecnico, I-00133 Rome, Italy
7
Department of Physics – University of Pisa, Largo B. Pontecorvo 3, 56127 Pisa, Italy
8
INFN, Largo B. Pontecorvo 3, 56127 Pisa, Italy
9
Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55105, USA
10
Department of Astronomy, The Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden
11
Astrophysics Division, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20546, USA
12
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
13
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Augusto Righi”, Università di Bologna, Via Gobetti 93/2, 40129 Bologna, Italy
Received:
6
August
2024
Accepted:
15
September
2024
New, deep HST photometry allowed us to identify and study eight compact and bright (MV ≤ −5.8) star clusters in the outskirts of the star-forming isolated dwarf galaxy NGC 5238 (M* ≃ 108 M⊙). Five of these clusters are new discoveries, and six appear projected onto and/or aligned with the tidal tails recently discovered around this galaxy. The clusters are partially resolved into stars, and their colour magnitude diagrams reveal a well-developed red giant branch, implying ages older than 1–2 Gyr. Their integrated luminosity and structural parameters are typical of classical globular clusters, and one of them, with MV = −10.56 ± 0.07, is as bright as ω Cen, the brightest globular cluster in the Milky Way. Since the properties of this cluster are in the range spanned by those of nuclear star clusters we suggest that it may be the nuclear remnant of the disrupted satellite of NGC 5238 that produced the observed tidal tails.
Key words: galaxies: dwarf / galaxies: interactions / galaxies: individual: NGC 5238 / galaxies: star clusters: general
© The Authors 2024
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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