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Table · dataset · 2015

UV star clusters in 4 elliptical galaxies

Listed in IVOA Registry (Virtual Observatory)

Small amounts of star formation in elliptical galaxies are suggested by several results: surprisingly young ages from optical line indices, cooling X-ray gas, and mid-infrared dust emission.

Description

Such star formation has previously been difficult to directly detect, but using ultraviolet Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 imaging, we have identified individual young stars and star clusters in four nearby ellipticals.

Ongoing star formation is detected in all galaxies, including three ellipticals that have previously exhibited potential signposts of star-forming conditions (NGC 4636, NGC 4697, and NGC 4374), as well as the typical "red and dead" NGC 3379. The current star formation in our closest targets, where we are most complete, is between 2.0 and 9.8x10^-5^M_{sun}_/yr. The star formation history was roughly constant from 0.5 to 1.5 Gyr (at (3-5)x10^-4^M_{sun}_/yr), but decreased by a factor of several in the past 0.3Gyr.

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Most star clusters have a mass between 10^2^ and 10^4^M_{sun}_. The specific star formation rates of ~10^-16^/yr (at the present day) or ~10^-14^/yr (when averaging over the past Gyr) imply that a fraction 10^-8^ of the stellar mass is younger than 100Myr and 10^-5^ is younger than 1Gyr, quantifying the level of frosting of recent star formation over the otherwise passive stellar population. There is no obvious correlation between either the presence or spatial distribution of postulated star formation indicators and the star formation we detect.

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Catalogue records · 2

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Stated by source
Uv
Inferred from text
Astronomical sciences 72% · Imaging 75%
Provenance · 1 source records, 10 field assertions
SourceKeyLast seenRaw
IVOA Registry (Virtual Observatory)ivo://cds.vizier/j/apj/770/13713 d agoJSON v1
FieldAssertionExtractorEvidence
access_levelsource · IVOA Registryconnector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0
concepts[field].anzsrc:group:5101enrichment · IVOA Registrytaxonomy-embedding@1.1.0title+keywords+description (72%)
concepts[field].local:field:astronomymapping · IVOA Registryconnector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0
concepts[modality].ivoa_waveband:uvsource · IVOA Registryconnector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0
concepts[modality].local:modality:imagingenrichment · IVOA Registrykeyword-concept-rules@1.0.0title+description (75%)
descriptionsource · IVOA Registryconnector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0rr.resource.res_description
license_textsource · IVOA Registryconnector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0
publication_datesource · IVOA Registryconnector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0
titlesource · IVOA Registryconnector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0rr.resource.res_title
updated_datesource · IVOA Registryconnector:ivoa_registry@1.0.0