Systematically Measuring Ultra-diffuse Galaxies (SMUDGes). VI. Nuclear Star Clusters

Abstract

We present our photometric search for potential nuclear star clusters (NSCs) in ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) as an extension of the SMUDGes catalog. We identify 325 SMUDGes galaxies with NSCs and, from the 144 with existing distance estimates, identify 33 NSC hosts as UDGs ( μ _0, _g ≥ 24 mag arcsec ^−2 , r _e ≥ 1.5 kpc). The SMUDGes with NSCs lie on the galaxy red sequence, satisfy the relationship between NSC and host galaxy stellar masses, have a mean NSC stellar mass fraction of 0.02 but reach as high as 0.1, have NSCs that are displaced from the host center with a standard deviation of 0.10 r _e , and weakly favor higher-density environments. All of these properties are consistent with previous results from higher surface brightness galaxy samples, allowing for at most a relatively weak dependence of NSC behavior on host galaxy surface brightness.

Keywords

• Low surface brightness galaxies
• Galaxy properties
• Galaxy structure
• Galaxy nuclei
• Star clusters