Publication Date

2010

Journal or Book Title

The Astrophysical Journal

Abstract

Early Release Science observations of the cluster NGC 3603 with the WFC3 on the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope allow us to study its recent star formation history. Our analysis focuses on stars with Hα excess emission, a robust indicator of their pre-main sequence (PMS) accreting status. The comparison with theoretical PMS isochrones shows that 2/3 of the objects with Hα excess emission have ages from 1 to 10 Myr, with a median value of 3 Myr, while a surprising 1/3 of them are older than 10 Myr. The study of the spatial distribution of these PMS stars allows us to confirm their cluster membership and to statistically separate them from field stars. This result establishes unambiguously for the first time that star formation in and around the cluster has been ongoing for at least 10-20 Myr, at an apparently increasing rate.

Comments

This is the pre-published version harvested from ArXiv. The published version is located at http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/720/2/1108/

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/720/2/1108

Pages

1108-

Volume

720

Issue

2

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