Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Star formation histories within the Antennae galaxies (Arp 244)

2009; Oxford University Press; Volume: 401; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15759.x

1365-2966

Hong-Xin Zhang, Yu Gao, Xu Kong,

Astronomy and Astrophysical Research

With the imagery from GALEX, HST, 2MASS, and Spitzer, and at the resolution of MIPS 24 micron(~6"), we study the variations of the broadband spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of star-forming regions within the nearest prototypal major merger -- the Antennae galaxies. By including MIPS 24 micron dust emission into stellar population analysis, we reliably, albeit roughly, constrain the star formation histories of these 24 micron selected star-forming regions across the merging disks of the Antennae. Our population analysis is consistent with the star formation scenario that, most regions across the whole system are at a modest level of star formation with the exception of some localized intense starburst sites in the well-known overlap regions and the western-loop regions of northern galaxy NGC 4038. Compared with all the other regions, the young overlap regions currently ( =80% from both hot dust and atomic/molecular lines) is comparable with that of the two galactic nuclei.