The evolution of star clusters: The resolved-star approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel resolved-star technique to identify and analyze young dissolving star clusters in nearby galaxies, providing new insights into their properties and evolution.

Contribution

The paper presents a new method combining stellar photometry, group-finding algorithms, and evolutionary models to detect and characterize young star clusters.

Findings

Identified 79 star cluster candidates in IC2574.

Clusters have ages up to about 100 million years.

Clusters exhibit a range of sizes and densities.

Abstract

We present the first results of a new technique to detect, locate, and characterize young dissolving star clusters. Using HST/ACS archival images of the nearby galaxy IC2574, we performed stellar PSF photometry and selected the most massive stars as our first test sample. We used a group-finding algorithm on the selected massive stars to find cluster candidates. We then plot the color-magnitude diagrams for each group, and use stellar evolutionary models to estimate their age. So far, we found 79 groups with ages of up to about 100 Myr, displaying various sizes and densities.