The star clusters of the Magellanic System

TL;DR

This review summarizes over 50 years of research on Magellanic Cloud star clusters, highlighting their diversity, formation, evolution, and their importance for understanding stellar and cluster physics in a nearby galaxy system.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the Magellanic Cluster system, emphasizing new insights into cluster formation, evolution, and their role as nearby analogs for extragalactic clusters.

Findings

Magellanic clusters have long disruption timescales.

Color-magnitude diagrams test stellar evolution models.

Clusters contribute to understanding extragalactic cluster types.

Abstract

More than 50 years have elapsed since the first studies of star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. The wealth of data accumulated since then has not only revealed a large cluster system, but also a diversified one, filling loci in the age, mass and chemical abundance parameter space which are complementary to Galactic clusters. Catalogs and photometric samples currently available cover most of the cluster mass range. The expectations of relatively long cluster disruption timescales in the Clouds have been confirmed, allowing reliable assessments of the cluster initial mass function and of the cluster formation rate in the Clouds. Due to their proximity to the Galaxy, Magellanic clusters are also well resolved into stars. Analysis of colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of clusters with different ages, masses and metallicities are useful tools to test dynamical effects such as mass loss due to stellar evolution, two-body relaxation, stellar evaporation, cluster interactions and tidal effects. The existence of massive and young Magellanic clusters has provided insight into the physics of cluster formation. The magnitudes and colours of different stellar types are confronted with stellar evolutionary tracks, thus constraining processes such as convective overshooting, stellar mass-loss, rotation and pre main-sequence evolution. Finally, the Magellanic cluster system may contribute with nearby and well studied counterparts of the recently proposed types of extragalactic clusters, such as Faint Fuzzies and Diffuse Star Clusters.