![The image of NGC 4324 in combined colors taken from the SDSS survey, DR9. Credit: Ahn et al., 2012. Young star-forming complexes detected in galaxy NGC 4324](https://oponame.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Young-star-forming-complexes-detected-in-galaxy-NGC-4324.jpg)
The image of NGC 4324 in combined colors taken from the SDSS survey, DR9. Credit: Ahn et al., 2012.
Using the Caucasus Mountains Observatory, Russian astronomers studied a nearby lenticular galaxy known as NGC 4324. They detected young star-forming complexes in the inner ring of this galaxy. The results, presented October 14 on arXiv.org, may improve our knowledge of the formation and evolution of NGC 4324.
Located approximately 85 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, NGC 4324 (also known as UGC 07451) is an early-type lenticular galaxy approximately 66,000 light-years in size. It has a stellar mass of about 56 billion solar masses, while its total mass is estimated to be at least 10 times greater.
Previous observations of NGC 4324 have shown it to contain a significant amount of gas and revealed its remarkable structure: a bright blue star-forming ring embedded in a large-scale stellar disk typical of lenticular galaxies.
A team of astronomers from Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia, led by Irina Proshina, inspected the pattern of star formation in the ring of NGC 4324. For this purpose, they used the telescope of 2.5m from Caucasus Mountains Observatory. The study was supplemented with archival footage from the SDSS, GALEX and WISE surveys.
“We decided to take full images of the galaxy NGC 4324 in narrow photometric bands centered on the Hα and [NII]λ6583 emission lines with the MaNGaL instrument – a mapper with a tunable filter… Observations were made on April 17, 2018 with the 2.5m telescope of the Caucasus Mountains Observatory,” wrote the researchers in the article.
In total, the study detected 18 young star-forming complexes (clusters) with an average size of about 1,600 light-years. The largest clusters were found to have estimated stellar masses reaching 10 million solar masses.
The results suggest that star explosions in these clusters began quite recently, around 10 million years ago. The astronomers explained that stars that may have formed during a previous starburst that took place around 200 million years ago, cannot now contribute to the far ultraviolet (FUV) luminosity having already exploded, or their peak brightness has now shifted to near-ultraviolet (NUV), leading to the observed drop in clump FUV.
According to the research, there is a regularity in the distribution of star-forming complexes in the ring of NGC 4324. This suggests that the physical mechanisms of local-scale star formation are the same in spiral galaxies and lenticulars.
The researchers concluded that their findings supported the hypothesis of a possible supply of gas to NGC 4324’s disk via falling gas-rich satellite galaxies or giant clouds.
“Clumps form in the ring due to gravitational instability, in which star formation ignites. gaseous clusters. In addition, the fall of a satellite or a giant gas cloud on the galactic disc can trigger another star explosion. Thus, the chain of ‘gas clusters – star complexes’ that we observe is a chain of propagating star formation both in space (in the ring) and in time,” explain the authors. of the item.
Young open cluster NGC 602 inspected with ALMA
IS Proshina, AV Moiseev, OK Sil’chenko, Young star-forming complexes in the ring of the galaxy S0 NGC 4324. arXiv:2210.07786v1 [astro-ph.GA]arxiv.org/abs/2210.07786
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