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The Small Magellanic Cloud: Molecular Gas and Star Formation

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Lessons from the Local Group

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Abstract

The Small Magellanic Cloud is the nearest galaxy in which we can study the gas, dust and star formation at low metallicities (1/10), resembling the early phases of galaxy formation in the Universe. The SMC has been studied in CO line emission but most of the molecular gas is likely to be in moderate extinction regions where CO is faint and photo dissociated. Dust emission is potentially a better molecular tracer because of its independence of photo-chemistry and density structures of the molecular clouds, allowing for a more complete census of the cold dense star forming gas distribution and its relationship to star formation. We present results of sub-mm observations which combined with Spitzer and Herschel confirm dust emission excess from the molecular gas and sets important constraint to use the dust emission at sub-millimeter as an alternative method to derive the amount of H2 gas in which star formation takes place. We discuss these results and their impact on other low metallicity systems in the Local Group.

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Acknowledgments

M.R. would like to express her gratitude to the organizers of the conference and for inviting her to give this summary talk. She would also like to thank Celia Verdugo for preparing the figures and A. Bolatto for many helpful discussion. M.R. wishes to acknowledge support from CONICYT through FONDECYT (Chile) grant N°1140839.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Chile, Chile

    Mónica Rubio

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  1. Mónica Rubio
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Correspondence to Mónica Rubio .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Kenneth Freeman

  2. IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, USA

    Bruce Elmegreen

  3. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    David Block

  4. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Matthew Woolway

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Rubio, M. (2015). The Small Magellanic Cloud: Molecular Gas and Star Formation. In: Freeman, K., Elmegreen, B., Block, D., Woolway, M. (eds) Lessons from the Local Group. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10614-4_25

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