Spatially-Resolved Recent Star Formation History in NGC 6946
The nearby face-on star forming spiral galaxy NGC 6946 is known as the Fireworks Galaxy due to its hosting an unusually large number of supernova. We analyze its resolved near-ultraviolet (NUV) stellar photometry measured from images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) Wide Field Came...
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Zusammenfassung: | The nearby face-on star forming spiral galaxy NGC 6946 is known as the
Fireworks Galaxy due to its hosting an unusually large number of supernova. We
analyze its resolved near-ultraviolet (NUV) stellar photometry measured from
images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3)
with F275W and F336W filters. We model the color-magnitude diagrams (CMD) of
the UV photometry to derive the spatially-resolved star formation history (SFH)
of NGC 6946 over the last 25 Myr. From this analysis, we produce maps of the
spatial distribution of young stellar populations and measure the total recent
star formation rate (SFR) of nearly the entire young stellar disk. We find the
global SFR(age$\leq$25 Myr)=$13.17 \substack{+0.91 \\-0.79} M_\odot/\rm yr$.
Over this period, the SFR is initially very high ($23.39\substack{+2.43\\-2.11}
M_\odot/\rm yr$ between 16-25 Myr ago), then monotonically decreases to a
recent SFR of $5.31\substack{+0.19\\-0.17} M_\odot/\rm yr$ in the last 10 Myr.
This decrease in global star formation rate over the last 25 Myr is consistent
with measurements made with other SFR indicators. We discuss in detail two of
the most active regions of the galaxy, which we find are responsible for 3% and
5% of the total star formation over the past 6.3 Myr. |
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DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2307.04853 |