Bibcode
Pilyugin, L. S.; Zinchenko, I. A.; Cedrés, B.; Cepa, J.; Bongiovanni, A.; Mattsson, L.; Vílchez, J. M.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 419, Issue 1, pp. 490-502.
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1
2012
Citations
14
Refereed citations
13
Description
With the aim of investigating galaxies with two strong simultaneous
starbursts, we have extracted a sample of galaxies with double-peaked
emission lines in their global spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
(SDSS) spectral data base. We then fitted the emission lines Hα,
Hβ, [O III]λ5007, [N II]λ6584, [S II]λ6717 and
[S II]λ6731 of 129 spectra by two Gaussians to separate the
radiation of the two (blue and red) components. A more or less reliable
decomposition of all these emission lines has been found for 55 spectra.
Using a standard Baldwin, Phillips & Terlevich (BPT) classification
diagram, we have been able to divide the galaxies from our sample into
two subsamples: Sample A consisting of 18 galaxies where both components
belong to the photoionized class of objects, and Sample B containing 37
galaxies that show non-thermal ionization [active galactic nuclei
(AGNs)]. We have examined the properties of the blue and red components,
and found that the differences between radial velocities of components
lie within 200-400 km s-1 for galaxies of both subsamples.
The equivalent number of ionizing stars is in the range of
104-105 O7V stars for each component in the
galaxies of Sample A. We have estimated the oxygen and nitrogen
abundances as well as the electron temperatures for each component using
the recent NS-calibration and from global spectra for galaxies from
Sample A using both NS- and ON-calibration. We have found that the
global oxygen abundance is typically in between the measured abundances
of individual components for our sample of galaxies, and that both
calibrations provide consistent global abundances. Finally, we suggest
that the classical O/H-N/O diagram be used to test the reliability of
the dividing lines between starburst-like objects and AGNs in the
so-called BPT diagram.
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