Issue |
A&A
Volume 550, February 2013
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A88 | |
Number of page(s) | 16 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201220580 | |
Published online | 01 February 2013 |
Piecing together the puzzle of NGC 5253: abundances, kinematics and WR stars⋆,⋆⋆
1
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, 85748
Garching bei München,
Germany
e-mail: mwestmoq@eso.org
2
Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD
21218,
USA
3
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge,
Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HA, UK
4
Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC),
C/ Camino Bajo de Huétor 50,
18008
Granada,
Spain
Received: 17 October 2012
Accepted: 10 December 2012
We present Gemini-S/GMOS-IFU optical spectroscopy of four regions near the centre of the nearby (3.8 Mpc) dwarf starburst galaxy NGC 5253. This galaxy is famous for hosting a radio supernebula containing two deeply embedded massive super star clusters, surrounded by a region of enhanced nitrogen abundance that has been linked to the presence of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. We detected 11 distinct sources of red WR bump (C iv) emission over a 20′′ (~350 pc) area, each consistent with the presence of ~1 WCE-type star. WC stars are not found coincident with the supernebula, although WN stars have previously been detected here. We performed a multi-component decomposition of the Hα line across all four fields and mapped the kinematics of the narrow and broad (FWHM = 100−250 km s-1) components. These maps paint a picture of localised gas flows, as part of multiple overlapping bubbles and filaments driven by the star clusters throughout the starburst. We confirm the presence of a strong Hα velocity gradient over ~4.″5 (~80 pc) coincident with the region of N/O enhancement, and high gas density known from previous study, and interpret this as an accelerating ionized gas outflow from the supernebula clusters. We measure the ionized gas abundances in a number of regions in the outer IFU positions and combine these with measurements from the literature to assess the radial abundance distribution. We find that the O/H and N/H profiles are consistent with being flat. Only the central 50 pc exhibits the well-known N/O enhancement, and we propose that the unusually high densities/pressures in the supernebula region have acted to impede the escape of metal-enriched hot winds from the star clusters and allow them to mix with the cooler phases, thus allowing these freshly processed chemicals to be seen in the optical.
Key words: ISM: abundances / ISM: kinematics and dynamics / galaxies: dwarf / galaxies: individual: NGC 5253 / galaxies: ISM / galaxies: starburst
The reduced datacubes are only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/550/A88
© ESO, 2013
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