Looking for obscured young star clusters in NCG 1313

TL;DR

This study uses HST NIR observations to analyze young star clusters in NGC 1313, estimating their ages, extinctions, and gas clearing timescales, revealing dust removal occurs rapidly within a few million years.

Contribution

It provides new estimates of gas clearing timescales for young clusters using NIR data, highlighting potential biases in optical-only studies.

Findings

Half of the young clusters have low extinction within 3 Myr.

Gas clearing timescales are estimated between 3 and 5 Myr.

Dust is rapidly removed from clusters within a few million years.

Abstract

Using recently acquired HST NIR observations (J, Pa$\beta$ and H bands) of the nearby galaxy NGC1313, we investigate the timescales required by a young star cluster to emerge from its natal cloud. We search for extincted star clusters, potentially embedded in their natal cloud as either: 1. compact sources in regions with high H$\alpha$/Pa$\beta$ extinctions; 2. compact HII regions that appear as point-like sources in the Pa$\beta$ emission map. The NUV--optical--NIR photometry of the candidate clusters is used to derive their ages, masses and extinctions via a least$-\chi^2$ SED broad and narrow--band fitting process. The 100 clusters in the final samples have masses in the range $\rm \log_{10}(M/M_\odot)=2.5-3.5$ and moderate extinctions, $\rm E(B-V)\lesssim1.0$ mag. Focusing on the young clusters ($0-6$ Myr) we derive a weak correlation between extinction and age of the clusters. Almost half of the clusters have low extinctions, $\rm E(B-V)<0.25$ mag, already at very young ages ($\le3$ Myr), suggesting that dust is quickly removed from clusters. A stronger correlation is found between the morphology of the nebular emission (compact, partial or absent, both in H$\alpha$ and Pa$\beta$) and cluster age. Relative fractions of clusters associated with a specific nebular morphology is used to estimate the typical timescales for clearing the natal gas cloud, resulting between 3 and 5 Myr, $\sim1$ Myr older than what estimated from NUV--optical--based cluster studies. This difference hints to a bias for optically--only based studies, which JWST will address in the coming years.