Massive Star Formation in Galactic Disks

Mathematics – Logic

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

Results of a comprehensive multi-band CCD imaging survey of 34 southern spiral galaxies will be presented. Surface photometry of this data has been performed to determine the radial profiles in the V and I bands, as well as for the pure Hα emission which traces the present-day rate of massive star formation. We find a significant proportion of the barred spirals exhibit a central Hα excess, which in many cases seems to indicate on-going nuclear star formation from bar-driven gas inflow. In the outer disk, the Hα profile can be well fit by an exponential disk, but with a scale length much longer than the V scale length, which itself tends to be slightly longer than the I scale length. An almost universal relationship is observed in the disk between the Hα surface brightness and the I band surface brightness at a given radius, with only a minor dependence on the galaxy's morphological type. Thus the rate of massive star formation per unit area is closely related to the old stellar mass surface density at each radius. Consequently, we believe we have the basis for a ``law'' of massive star formation in the disks of spiral galaxies, one which has a surprising degree of independence from both galactic dynamics and gas distribution.

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