HST photometry of IC 883 star clusters

The galaxy is a member of the Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey (GOALS) and is of particular interest for a detailed examination of a luminous late-stage merger due to the richness of the optically visible star clusters and the extended nature of the nuclear X-ray, mid-IR, CO, and radio emission.

In the HST Advanced Camera for Surveys images, the galaxy is shown to contain 156 optically visible star clusters distributed throughout the nuclear regions and tidal tails of the merger, with a majority of visible clusters residing in an arc ~3-7kpc from the position of the mid-infrared core of the galaxy. The luminosity functions of the clusters have an {alpha}_F435W_~-2.17 +/-0.22 and {alpha}_F814W_~-2.01+/-0.21, compared with V-band-derived values measured for the well-studied LIRG NGC 34 and the Antennae Galaxy of {alpha}~-1.7+/-0.1 and -2.13+/-0.07, respectively.