Published in

American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(690), p. L76-L80, 2008

DOI: 10.1088/0004-637x/690/1/l76

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The Dust-to-Gas Ratio in the Small Magellanic Cloud Tail

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Postprint: archiving forbidden
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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The Tail region of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) was imaged using the MIPS instrument on the Spitzer Space Telescope as part of the SAGE-SMC Spitzer Legacy. Diffuse infrared emission from dust was detected in all the MIPS bands. The Tail gas-to-dust ratio was measured to be 1200 +/- 350 using the MIPS observations combined with existing IRAS and HI observations. This gas-to-dust ratio is higher than the expected 500-800 from the known Tail metallicity indicating possible destruction of dust grains. Two cluster regions in the Tail were resolved into multiple sources in the MIPS observations and local gas-to-dust ratios were measured to be ~440 and ~250 suggests dust formation and/or significant amounts of ionized gas in these regions. These results support the interpretation that the SMC Tail is a tidal tail recently stripped from the SMC that includes gas, dust, and young stars. ; Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, ApJ Letters, in press, (version with full resolution figures at http://www.stsci.edu/~kgordon/papers/PS_files/sage-smc_taildust_v1.62.pdf)