Is Bulge Formation Still Going-On? , An ACS Survey of Pseudo-Bulges

Details Is Bulge Formation Still Going-On? , An ACS Survey of Pseudo-Bulges Is Bulge Formation Still Going-On? , An ACS Survey of Pseudo-Bulges

Jul 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002hst..prop.9395c&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #9395

Physics

Hst Proposal Id #9395

Scientific paper

Pseudo-bulges, i.e., bulges with an exponential light profile, have been unveiled in the centers of many intermediate-type disks. Their structural similarity with the disks provides support to theoretical scenarios in which bulges may form due to secular evolution processes within the host disks. If at play, these processes would likely be active throughout a large fraction of cosmic history down to our days: `young' bulges should exist. Our previous HST WFPC2 and NICMOS survey of ~100 spirals has provided V-H colors for 11 Sb-Sc pseudo-bulges, and these could be interpreted as suggestive of relatively young stellar ages. Furthermore, dense nuclei have been discovered in these pseudo-bulges, and their V-H colors may imply stellar masses sufficiently large to activate the formation of the pseudo- bulge by means of dynamical dissolution of progenitor bars. However, the V-H color, on its own, is fully degenerate towards stellar ages, metallicities and masses, as well as dust content. We therefore propose to use ACS to observe the 11 pseudo-bulges of our combined WFPC2 and NICMOS sample in the F330W, F435W, and F814W filters. Extending the wavelength baseline to the bluer passbands is essential to break the mass-age-metallicity-dust degeneracy, and will provide far more accurate estimates for the stellar population properties of the pseudo-bulges and their nuclei. Proving the existence of `young' bulges in the local Universe would have a big impact in our understanding of the formation of the Hubble sequence.

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