TY - JOUR
T1 - Swift Ultraviolet Survey of the Magellanic Clouds (SUMAC) - I. Shape of the ultraviolet dust extinction law and recent star formation history of the Small Magellanic Cloud
AU - Hagen, Lea M.Z.
AU - Siegel, Michael H.
AU - Hoversten, Erik A.
AU - Gronwall, Caryl
AU - Immler, Stefan
AU - Hagen, Alex
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the anonymous referee for comments that improved this paper. We acknowledge support from NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis grant NNX12AE28G. and sponsorship at PSU by NASA contract NAS5-00136. We thank Phil Massey for providing fully-reduced FITS files of his optical SMC data. The Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos is supported by the Eberly College of Science and the Office of the Senior Vice President for Research at the Pennsylvania State University. This research made use of MONTAGE, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Earth Science Technology Office, Computational Technologies Project, under Cooperative Agreement Number NCC5-626 between NASA and the California Institute of Technology. The code is maintained by the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive. We thank the IRSA help desk for support of the online version of MONTAGE.
PY - 2017/5/1
Y1 - 2017/5/1
N2 - We present the first results from the Swift Ultraviolet Survey of the Magellanic Clouds, the highest resolution ultraviolet (UV) survey of the Magellanic Clouds yet completed. In this paper, we focus on the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). When combined with multiwavelength optical and infrared observations, the three near-UV filters on the Swift Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope are conducive to measuring the shape of the dust extinction curve and the strength of the 2175 Å dust bump. We divide the SMC into UV-detected star-forming regions and large 200 arcsec (58 pc) pixels and then model the spectral energy distributions using a Markov-chain Monte Carlo method to constrain the ages, masses, and dust curve properties. We find that the majority of the SMC has a 2175 Å dust bump, which is larger to the north-east and smaller to the south-west, and that the extinction curve is predominantly steeper than the Galactic curve. We also derive a star formation history and find evidence for peaks in the star formation rate at 6-10, 30-80, and 400 Myr, the latter two of which are consistent with previous work.
AB - We present the first results from the Swift Ultraviolet Survey of the Magellanic Clouds, the highest resolution ultraviolet (UV) survey of the Magellanic Clouds yet completed. In this paper, we focus on the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). When combined with multiwavelength optical and infrared observations, the three near-UV filters on the Swift Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope are conducive to measuring the shape of the dust extinction curve and the strength of the 2175 Å dust bump. We divide the SMC into UV-detected star-forming regions and large 200 arcsec (58 pc) pixels and then model the spectral energy distributions using a Markov-chain Monte Carlo method to constrain the ages, masses, and dust curve properties. We find that the majority of the SMC has a 2175 Å dust bump, which is larger to the north-east and smaller to the south-west, and that the extinction curve is predominantly steeper than the Galactic curve. We also derive a star formation history and find evidence for peaks in the star formation rate at 6-10, 30-80, and 400 Myr, the latter two of which are consistent with previous work.
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U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stw2954
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stw2954
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85031118976
VL - 466
SP - 4540
EP - 4557
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
SN - 0035-8711
IS - 4
ER -