HAMSTERS

HST Astrometric Survey of Magellanic Clouds Star Clusters (HAMSTERS)

Primary Investigator: Florian Niederhofer

HLSP Authors: Florian Niederhofer

Released: 2024-06-26

Updated: 2024-06-26

Primary Reference(s): Niederhofer et al. 2024

DOI: 10.17909/tx9s-7540

Citations: See ADS Metrics

Read Me

Source Data:

Three-color image of NGC 1856 constructed from multi-epoch HST observations in the F336W (blue), F555W (green) and F814W (red) filters. The inlays show the vector-point diagram of all sources in the field of NGC 1856 with measured proper motions (left) and the distribution of the proper motion errors as a function of the F814W magnitude (right). For this cluster, bright, well-measured stars reach precisions of about 20 micro-arcseconds per year (corresponding to 4.9 km/s at the distance of the LMC).

Overview

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Astrometric Survey of Magellanic Clouds Star Clusters (HAMSTERS) presents astro-photometric catalogs for 23 massive star clusters within the Large Magellanic Cloud using multi-epoch HST observations. For 19 clusters, data from a dedicated HST program (GO-16748) add an additional epoch of observations for proper motion determinations. The authors calculated stellar proper motions by combining archival data from the ACS/WFC and WFC3/UVIS instruments with observations from program GO-16748. This sample of clusters was complemented with four more clusters that have already-existing observations in the HST archive suitable for proper motion calculations. The used data sets span time baselines between 4.7 years and 18.2 years, depending on the cluster. Bright well-measured stars reach nominal proper motion precisions of 55 micro-arcseconds per year down to 11 micro-arcseconds per year. HST's high resolution and sensitivity allowed to determine proper motions for a total of 855,000 sources, distributed among the 23 clusters within the sample.

Data Products

For each cluster, the provided catalog is split into an astrometric (proper motion) file and one individual photometric file for each combination of filter and epoch. The catalogs for a given cluster are all sorted in the same order such that the same line in the different catalogs corresponds to the same source.

The photometric catalogs are named according to the following convention:

hlsp_hamsters_hst_<inst>_<target>_<filter>_v1.0_phot-catalog-<epoch>.<ext>

where:

<inst> is the HST instrument used for the observation, either "acs" or "wfc3"
<target> is the target cluster
<filter> is the filter used for the observation
<epoch> is the observation epoch, e.g. "ep1", "ep2", "ep3", "ep4"
<ext> is the file extension, either "fits" or "txt"

The astrometric (proper motion) catalogs are named according to the following convention:

hlsp_hamsters_hst_<inst>_<target>_multi_v1.0_pm-catalog.<ext>

where:

<inst> is the HST instrument used for the observation, either "acs" or "wfc3"
<target> is the target cluster
<ext> is the file extension, either "fits" or "txt"

Data file types:

_phot-catalog.fits/txt	Photometric catalog
_pm-catalog.fits/txt	Proper motion catalog

Data Access

Cluster Catalog Bulk Download Bundles
Hodge 11 (15 MB)	NGC 1846 (9.1 MB)	NGC 2108 (11 MB)
NGC 1651 (3.2 MB)	NGC 1850 (19 MB)	NGC 2173 (3.4 MB)
NGC 1718 (4.9 MB)	NGC 1856 (25 MB)	NGC 2203 (3.4 MB)
NGC 1783 (15 MB)	NGC 1866 (8.4 MB)	NGC 2209 (1.6 MB)
NGC 1805 (2.0 MB)	NGC 1868 (2.1 MB)	NGC 2210 (18 MB)
NGC 1806 (11 MB)	NGC 1898 (14 MB)	NGC 2213 (2.3 MB)
NGC 1831 (4.3 MB)	NGC 1978 (23 MB)	NGC 2257 (12 MB)
NGC 1841 (14 MB)	NGC 2005 (27 MB)

Citations

Please remember to cite the appropriate paper(s) below and the DOI if you use these data in a published work.

Note: These HLSP data products are licensed for use under CC BY 4.0.