No Arabic abstract
We report the discovery of three new star clusters in the halo of the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822. These clusters were found in the deep images taken with the MegaPrime at the CFHT, covering a total field of 2 deg x 2 deg. The most remote cluster is found to be located as far as 79 arcmin away from the center of NGC 6822. This distance is several times larger than the size of the region in NGC 6822 where star clusters were previously found. Morphological structures of the clusters and color-magnitude diagrams of the resolved stars in the clusters show that at least two of these clusters are proabably old globular clusters.
A transient in the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822 (Barnards Galaxy) was discovered on 2017 August 2 and is only the second classical nova discovered in that galaxy. We conducted optical, near-ultraviolet, and X-ray follow-up observations of the eruption, the results of which we present here. This very fast nova had a peak $V$-band magnitude in the range $-7.41>M_V>-8.33$ mag, with decline times of $t_{2,V} = 8.1 pm 0.2$ d and $t_{3,V} = 15.2 pm 0.3$ d. The early- and late-time spectra are consistent with an Fe II spectral class. The H$alpha$ emission line initially has a full width at half-maximum intensity of $sim 2400$ km s$^{-1}$ - a moderately fast ejecta velocity for the class. The H$alpha$ line then narrows monotonically to $sim1800$ km s$^{-1}$ by 70 d post-eruption. The lack of a pre-eruption coincident source in archival Hubble Space Telescope imaging implies that the donor is a main sequence, or possibly subgiant, star. The relatively low peak luminosity and rapid decline hint that AT 2017fvz may be a faint and fast nova.
We present the first Herschel PACS and SPIRE images of the low-metallicity galaxy NGC6822 observed from 70 to 500 mu and clearly resolve the HII regions with PACS and SPIRE. We find that the ratio 250/500 is dependent on the 24 mu surface brightness in NGC6822, which would locally link the heating processes of the coldest phases of dust in the ISM to the star formation activity. We model the SEDs of some regions HII regions and less active regions across the galaxy and find that the SEDs of HII regions show warmer ranges of dust temperatures. We derive very high dust masses when graphite is used in our model to describe carbon dust. Using amorphous carbon, instead, requires less dust mass to account for submm emission due to its lower emissivity properties. This indicates that SED models including Herschel constraints may require different dust properties than commonly used.
We report the discovery of a large number of short-period variable stars in the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC6822, based on deep time-series imaging carried out with the ESO Very Large Telescope. In particular, we found a modest population of RR Lyrae stars tracing the presence of an old stellar component in NGC6822. Measurements of the average luminosity of RR Lyrae stars provide a new independent estimate of the distance to this galaxy based on a Pop.II indicator, (m-M)o=23.36 +/-0.17. In addition, our new data show a significant population of small-amplitude, short-period variable stars filling the instability strip starting at luminosities only a few tenths of a magnitude brighter than the RR Lyrae stars.
Images of five fields in the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822 obtained with the {it Hubble Space Telescope} in the F555W and F814W filters are presented. Photometry for the stars in these images was extracted using the Point-Spread-Function fitting program HSTPHOT/MULTIPHOT. The resulting color-magnitude diagrams reach down to $Vapprox26$, a level well below the red clump, and were used to solve quantitatively for the star formation history of NGC 6822. Assuming that stars began forming in this galaxy from low-metallicity gas and that there is little variation in the metallicity at each age, the distribution of stars along the red giant branch is best fit with star formation beginning in NGC 6822 12-15 Gyr ago. The best-fitting star formation histories for the old and intermediate age stars are similar among the five fields and show a constant or somewhat increasing star formation rate from 15 Gyr ago to the present except for a possible dip in the star formation rate from 3 to 5 Gyr ago. The main differences among the five fields are in the higher overall star formation rate per area in the bar fields as well as in the ratio of the recent star formation rate to the average past rate. These variations in the recent star formation rate imply that stars formed within the past 0.6 Gyr are not spatially very well mixed throughout the galaxy.
To test the existence of a possible radial gradient in oxygen abundances within the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822, we have obtained optical spectra of 19 nebulae with the EFOSC2 spectrograph on the 3.6-m telescope at ESO La Silla. The extent of the measured nebulae spans galactocentric radii in the range between 0.05 kpc and 2 kpc (over four exponential scale lengths). In five H II regions (Hubble I, Hubble V, Kalpha, Kbeta, KD28e), the temperature-sensitive [O III] 4363 emission line was detected, and direct oxygen abundances were derived. Oxygen abundances for the remaining H II regions were derived using bright-line methods. The oxygen abundances for three A-type supergiant stars are slightly higher than nebular values at comparable radii. Linear least-square fits to various subsets of abundance data were obtained. When all of the measured nebulae are included, no clear signature is found for an abundance gradient. A fit to only newly observed H II regions with [O III] 4363 detections yields an oxygen abundance gradient of -0.14 +/- 0.07 dex/kpc. The gradient becomes slightly more significant (-0.16 +/- 0.05 dex/kpc) when three additional H II regions with [O III] 4363 measurements from the literature are added. Assuming no abundance gradient, we derive a mean nebular oxygen abundance 12+log(O/H) = 8.11 +/- 0.10 from [O III] 4363 detections in the five H II regions from our present data; this mean value corresponds to [O/H] = -0.55.