Star Formation in the Extreme Outer Galaxy: the IMF in a low metallicity environment
Abstract
We are conducting a deep near-infrared (NIR) imaging survey of young embedded clusters in the extreme outer Galaxy (hereafter EOG), at the Galactic radius (Rg) of more than 18 kpc. The EOG is an excellent laboratory to study the nature of the IMF in a low-metallicity environment with a great advantage of the proximity compared to nearby dwarf galaxies, such as LMC & SMC. As a first step, we obtained deep NIR images of Digel Cloud 2 clusters at Rg ~19 kpc using the Subaru 8.2-m telescope. The observed K-band luminosity function shows that IMF in the low metallicity environment down to ~ 0.1 Msun is not significantly different from the typical IMFs in the field and in the nearby star clusters as was suggested in our earlier work.
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