Tidal Tails in Interacting Galaxies: Formation of Compact Stellar Structures

TL;DR

This study uses Hubble Space Telescope images to analyze the formation of compact stellar clusters in the tidal tails of interacting galaxies, revealing that their star cluster demographics align with existing star formation models.

Contribution

It provides new observational data on star cluster formation in tidal tails across diverse galaxy interactions, suggesting minimal modifications to current models.

Findings

Star cluster demographics are consistent with existing star formation theories.

Tidal tail environments can be explained by normalized Schechter cluster initial mass functions.

Diverse tail properties do not significantly alter star cluster formation processes.

Abstract

We have used V- and I- band images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to identify compact stellar clusters within the tidal tails of twelve different interacting galaxies. The seventeen tails within our sample span a physical parameter space of HI/stellar masses, tail pressure and density through their diversity of tail lengths, optical brightnesses, mass ratios, HI column densities, stage on the Toomre sequence, and tail kinematics. Our preliminary findings in this study indicate that star cluster demographics of the tidal tail environment are compatible with the current understanding of star cluster formation in quiescent systems, possibly only needing changes in certain parameters or normalization of the Schechter cluster initial mass function (CIMF) to replicate what we observe in color-magnitude diagrams and a brightest absolute magnitude -- log N plot.