Bibcode
Williams, Benjamin F.; Dalcanton, Julianne J.; Seth, Anil C.; Weisz, Daniel; Dolphin, Andrew; Skillman, Evan; Harris, Jason; Holtzman, Jon; Girardi, Léo; de Jong, Roelof S.; Olsen, Knut; Cole, Andrew; Gallart, Carme; Gogarten, Stephanie M.; Hidalgo, Sebastian L.; Mateo, Mario; Rosema, Keith; Stetson, Peter B.; Quinn, Thomas
Bibliographical reference
The Astronomical Journal, Volume 137, Issue 1, pp. 419-430 (2009).
Advertised on:
1
2009
Citations
62
Refereed citations
59
Description
The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury is a
large Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/ACS treasury program to obtain
resolved stellar photometry for a volume-limited sample of galaxies out
to 4 Mpc. As part of this program, we have obtained deep ACS imaging of
a field in the outer disk of the large spiral galaxy M81. The field
contains the outskirts of a spiral arm as well as an area containing no
current star formation. Our imaging results in a color-magnitude diagram
(CMD) reaching to m F814W = 28.8 and m F606W =
29.5, one magnitude fainter than the red clump. Through detailed
modeling of the full CMD, we quantify the age and metallicity
distribution of the stellar populations contained in the field. The mean
metallicity in the field is -1 < [M/H] < 0 and only a small
fraction of stars have ages lsim 1 Gyr. The results show that most of
the stars in this outer disk field were formed by z ~ 1 and that the arm
structure at this radius has a lifetime of gsim 100 Myr. We discuss the
measured evolution of the M81 disk in the context of surveys of high
redshift disk galaxies and deep stellar photometry of other nearby
galaxies. All of these indicate that massive spiral disks are mostly
formed by z ~ 1 and that they have experienced rapid metal enrichment.
Related projects
Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
The general aim of the project is to research the structure, evolutionary history and formation of galaxies through the study of their resolved stellar populations, both from photometry and spectroscopy. The group research concentrates in the most nearby objects, namely the Local Group galaxies including the Milky Way and M33 under the hypothesis
Martín
López Corredoira