Star formation and the evolution of dwarf galaxies

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

Recent VLA observations of the 21cm line of HI in a sample of 7 nearby dwarf galaxies, show a surprising amount of detail. All galaxies observed with sufficient spatial and spectral resolution are riddled with large scale holes. The HI shells are seen to be expanding and are the product of violent star formation events. They are similar to the large HI shells observed in our Galaxy. The low mass, and hence low rotation velocity, of dwarf galaxies allows the shells to remain clearly visible without distortions by differential rotation. For very low mass dwarf galaxies, the entire ISM is dominated by one large hole. These systems spend a significant amount of time in a quiescent phase as the gas is pushed outside the main body of the galaxy. For high mass systems, multiple holes are visible and star formation propagates through shocks induced when two or more large scale shells collide. The differential rotation produces incipient spiral structure in the most massive dwarfs. The arm and interarm regions are simply the walls and the evacuated inner parts of the shells respectively.

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