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The recent star formation history of NGC 628 on resolved scales

Lomaeva, Maria; De Looze, Ilse; Saintonge, Amélie; Decleir, Marjorie; (2022) The recent star formation history of NGC 628 on resolved scales. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , Article stac2940. 10.1093/mnras/stac2940. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Star formation histories (SFHs) are integral to our understanding of galaxy evolution. We can study recent SFHs by comparing the star formation rate (SFR) calculated using different tracers, as each probes a different timescale. We aim to calibrate a proxy for the present-day rate of change in SFR, dSFR/dt, which does not require full spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling and depends on as few observables as possible, to guarantee its broad applicability. To achieve this, we create a set of models in CIGALE and define a SFR change diagnostic as the ratio of the SFR averaged over the past 5 and 200 Myr, ⟨SFR5⟩/⟨SFR200⟩⁠, probed by the Hα −FUV colour. We apply ⟨SFR5⟩/⟨SFR200⟩ to the nearby spiral NGC 628 and find that its star formation activity has overall been declining in the recent past, with the spiral arms, however, maintaining a higher level of activity. The impact of the spiral arm structure is observed to be stronger on ⟨SFR5⟩/⟨SFR200⟩ than on the star formation efficiency (SFEH2⁠). In addition, increasing disk pressure tends to increase recent star formation, and consequently ⟨SFR5⟩/⟨SFR200⟩⁠. We conclude that ⟨SFR5⟩/⟨SFR200⟩ is sensitive to the molecular gas content, spiral arm structure, and disk pressure. The ⟨SFR5⟩/⟨SFR200⟩ indicator is general and can be used to reconstruct the recent SFH of any star-forming galaxy for which Hα, FUV, and either mid- or far-IR photometry is available, without the need of detailed modeling.

Type: Article
Title: The recent star formation history of NGC 628 on resolved scales
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac2940
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac2940
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Galaxies: spiral, galaxies: star formation
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10157638
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