Issue |
A&A
Volume 662, June 2022
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | L6 | |
Number of page(s) | 8 | |
Section | Letters to the Editor | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202243766 | |
Published online | 17 June 2022 |
Letter to the Editor
Linking stellar populations to H II regions across nearby galaxies
I. Constraining pre-supernova feedback from young clusters in NGC 1672
1
Argelander-Institut für Astronomie, Universität Bonn, Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn, Germany
e-mail: ashleybarnes.astro@gmail.com
2
Ritter Astrophysical Research Center, The University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606, USA
3
Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Mönchhofstraße 12-14, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
4
Institut für Theoretische Astrophysik, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Albert-Ueberle-Str 2, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
5
INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo E. Fermi 5, 50125 Florence, Italy
6
The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA
7
Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Camino del Observatorio 1515, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile
8
Centro de Astronomía (CITEVA), Universidad de Antofagasta, Avenida Angamos 601, Antofagasta, Chile
9
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA
10
TAPIR, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
11
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
12
Univ Lyon, ENS de Lyon, CNRS, Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon UMR5574, 69230 Saint-Genis-Laval, France
13
Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University, Weston Creek, ACT 2611, Australia
14
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, University of Western Australia, 7 Fairway, Crawley, 6009 WA, Australia
15
Universität Heidelberg, Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Wissenschaftliches Rechnen, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
16
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
17
Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E1, Canada
18
Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab, 950 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
19
Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
20
Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University, 140 West 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
21
Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
22
Institute for Computational Cosmology, Department of Physics, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
23
Department of Physics, Tamkang University, No.151, Yingzhuan Road, Tamsui District, New Taipei City 251301, Taiwan
24
Departamento de Física Teórica, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Cantoblanco, Spain
25
Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
26
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
27
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
Received:
12
April
2022
Accepted:
11
May
2022
Context. Stellar feedback is one of the fundamental factors regulating the evolution of galaxies. However, we still do not have access to strong observational constraints on the relative importance of the different feedback mechanisms (e.g. radiation, ionised gas pressure, stellar winds) in driving H II region evolution and molecular cloud disruption. To quantify and compare the different feedback mechanisms, the size of an H II region is crucial, whereas samples of well-resolved H II regions are scarce.
Aims. We constrain the relative importance of the various feedback mechanisms from young massive star populations by resolving H II regions across the disk of the nearby star-forming galaxy NGC 1672.
Methods. We combined measurements of ionised gas nebular lines obtained by PHANGS-MUSE, with high-resolution (PSF FWHM ∼ 0.1″; ∼10 pc) imaging from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in both the narrow-band Hα and broad-band (NUV, U, B, V, I) filters. We identified a sample of 40 isolated, compact H II regions in the HST Hα image. We measured the sizes of these H II regions, which were previously unresolved in seeing-limited ground-based observations. In addition, we identified the ionisation source(s) for each H II region from catalogues produced as part of the PHANGS-HST survey. In doing so, we were able to link young stellar populations with the properties of their surrounding H II regions.
Results. The HST observations allowed us to resolve all 40 regions, with radii between 5 and 40 pc. The H II regions investigated here are mildly dominated by thermal or wind pressure, yet their elevation above the radiation pressure is within the expected uncertainty range. We see that radiation pressure provides a substantially higher contribution to the total pressure than previously found in the literature over similar size scales. In general, we find higher pressures within more compact H II regions, which is driven by the inherent size scaling relations of each pressure term, albeit with significant scatter introduced by the variation in the stellar population properties (e.g. luminosity, mass, age, metallicity).
Conclusions. For nearby galaxies, the combination of MUSE/VLT observations with stellar population and resolved Hα observations from HST provides a promising approach that could yield the statistics required to map out how the importance of different stellar feedback mechanisms evolve over the lifetime of a H II region.
Key words: H II regions / galaxies: evolution / galaxies: star clusters: general
© A. T. Barnes et al. 2022
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article is published in open access under the Subscribe-to-Open model. Subscribe to A&A to support open access publication.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.