Far-ultraviolet imaging of the large magellanic cloud populous cluster NGC 1978 with WFPC2

Andrew A. Cole, Jeremy R. Mould, John S. Gallagher, John T. Clarke, John T. Trauger, Gilda E. Ballester, Christopher J. Burrows, Stefano Casertano, David Crisp, Richard Griffiths, J. Jeff Hester, John G. Hoessel, Jon A. Holtzman, Paul A. Scowen, Karl R. Stapelfeldt, James A. Westphal

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

We have imaged the ∼2.2 billion-year-old Large Magellanic Cloud populous cluster NGC 1978 in the far-ultraviolet and visible with the second Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WFPC2) on the Hubble Space Telescope. The far-ultraviolet images show a sparse stellar field with little apparent density enhancement in the cluster core. The visible images are dominated by the cluster's first-ascent and second-ascent red giants, which are completely invisible to the far-ultraviolet filter. No evidence for a hot horizontal branch population of core-helium-burning stars is seen; nor is there any apparent indication of a significant blue straggler population. These results suggest that the presence of a rich, young population of field stars in the NGC 1978 region is responsible for the unusual location of the cluster in the integrated light color-color plots produced by IUE.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1945-1950
Number of pages6
JournalAstronomical Journal
Volume114
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 1997
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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