Gemini Spectroscopic Survey of Young Star Clusters in Merging/Interacting Galaxies. IV. Stephan's Quintet

TL;DR

This spectroscopic survey of young star clusters in Stephan's Quintet reveals their ages, masses, and structural properties, demonstrating ongoing star formation in tidal debris and potential evolution into intergalactic clusters.

Contribution

First spectroscopic confirmation of ages, masses, and sizes of clusters in Stephan's Quintet's tidal debris, supporting continuous star formation over 150 Myr.

Findings

Clusters aged 3-125 Myr with high masses suggest long-term survival.

One cluster is notably extended, indicating environmental effects on cluster size.

Star formation persists for at least 150 Myr in tidal debris.

Abstract

We present a spectroscopic survey of 21 young massive clusters and complexes and one tidal dwarf galaxy candidate (TDG) in Stephan's Quintet, an interacting compact group of galaxies. All of the selected targets lie outside the main galaxies of the system and are associated with tidal debris. We find clusters with ages between a few and 125 Myr and confirm the ages estimated through HST photometry by Fedotov et al. (2011), as well as their modelled interaction history of the Quintet. Many of the clusters are found to be relatively long-lived, given their spectrosopically derived ages, while their high masses suggest that they will likely evolve to eventually become intergalactic clusters. One cluster, T118, is particularly interesting, given its age (\sim 125 Myr), high mass (\sim 2\times10^6 M\odot) and position in the extreme outer end of the young tidal tail. This cluster appears to be quite extended (Reff \sim 12 - 15 pc) compared to clusters observed in galaxy disks (Reff \sim 3 - 4 pc), which confirms an effect we previously found in the tidal tails of NGC 3256, where clusters are similarly extended. We find that star and cluster formation can proceed at a continuous pace for at least \sim 150 Myr within the tidal debris of interacting galaxies. The spectrum of the TDG candidate is dominated by a young population (\sim 7 Myr), and assuming a single age for the entire region, has a mass of at least 10^6 M\odot.