Bibcode
Alonso-Herrero, A.; Ryder, S. D.; Knapen, J. H.
Referencia bibliográfica
The Central Kiloparsec of Starbursts and AGN: The La Palma Connection, ASP Conference Proceedings Vol. 249. Edited by J. H. Knapen, J. E. Beckman, I. Shlosman, and T. J. Mahoney. ISBN: 1-58381-089-7. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2001, p. 557.
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2001
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Descripción
We analyze the star formation properties of the hotspot galaxy NGC 2903
using high resolution Hubble Space Telescope and adaptive optics
observations. The circumnuclear star formation in NGC 2903 shows a
ringlike morphology with an approximate diameter of 625 pc. For the
first time, the infrared hotspots have been resolved into individual
young stellar clusters or groups of these. We constrain the ages of the
stellar clusters to 4--7 Myr after the peak of star formation, or to
absolute ages of 6.5--9.5 Myr for the assumed short-duration Gaussian
bursts, by using the available photometric and spectroscopic data,
together with evolutionary synthesis models. The H ii regions in the
circumnuclear star-forming ring have Paα luminosities close to
that of the giant H ii region 30 Doradus. Their spatial distribution is
not coincident with that of the stellar clusters, which are older than
the H ii regions. We postulate that the H ii regions will evolve into
bright infrared stellar clusters similar to those observed today.