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J. D. Dowell (Rice U.), B. A. Buckalew (U. of Wyoming), J. C. Tan (ETH-Zurich)
The initial cluster mass function (ICMF) has been studied in disk galaxies and the Magellanic clouds using the luminosity function of clusters found in those galaxies. In order to better gauge the universality of the ICMF we have expanded the survey to include stellar clusters in 19 irregular galaxies in a volume-limited survey using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The masses and ages were determined by comparing their ugriz magnitudes to those from starburst models. To address the problem of survivability, we limited our analysis to clusters with ages \leq 20Myr. We found the slope of the ICMF to be 1.40±.06 indicating that irregular galaxies have a much shallower slope compared to disk galaxies and the Magellanic clouds.
This work has been supported by NSF REU grant AST-0353760.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.