THE NATURE OF STARBURSTS. III. THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF STAR FORMATION
- Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics, School of Physics and Astronomy, 116 Church Street, S.E., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Box 351580, Seattle, WA 98195 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55105 (United States)
- Raytheon Company, 1151 E. Hermans Road, Tucson, AZ 85756 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, New Mexico State University, Box 30001-Department 4500, 1320 Frenger Street, Las Cruces, NM 88003 (United States)
We map the spatial distribution of recent star formation over a few Multiplication-Sign 100 Myr timescales in 15 starburst dwarf galaxies using the location of young blue helium burning stars identified from optically resolved stellar populations in archival Hubble Space Telescope observations. By comparing the star formation histories from both the high surface brightness central regions and the diffuse outer regions, we measure the degree to which the star formation has been centrally concentrated during the galaxies' starbursts, using three different metrics for the spatial concentration. We find that the galaxies span a full range in spatial concentration, from highly centralized to broadly distributed star formation. Since most starbursts have historically been identified by relatively short timescale star formation tracers (e.g., H{alpha} emission), there could be a strong bias toward classifying only those galaxies with recent, centralized star formation as starbursts, while missing starbursts that are spatially distributed.
- OSTI ID:
- 22086456
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 759, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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