Bibcode
Knapen, J. H.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 297, Issue 1, pp. 255-264.
Advertised on:
6
1998
Citations
45
Refereed citations
43
Description
From a new mosaic image in the Hα line of the complete disc of the
spiral galaxy M100, a catalogue is composed listing 1948 individual H II
regions. I give details of the data collection and reduction procedure,
and of the production of the H II region catalogue. For each H II
region, the catalogue gives its position relative to the centre of the
galaxy, its deprojected distance to the centre, its radius and its
calibrated luminosity. An indication is included as to whether the H II
region is located in the arms, between them, or in the circumnuclear
star-forming region. I present the results of a statistical study of
properties of the H II regions. The luminosity function of the complete
ensemble of H II regions shows a characteristic shape well fitted by a
power-law slope in the higher luminosity range, and complying with
literature values for galaxies like M100. Luminosity function slopes for
arm and interarm H II region populations separately are found to be
equal within the errors of the fits, indicating that whereas the density
wave accumulates material into the arm regions, and may trigger star
formation there, it does not in fact change the mass distribution of the
star-forming clouds, nor the statistical properties of the H II region
population. Diameter distributions and the radial number density
distribution are discussed. The latter indicates those areas where most
star formation occurs: the circumnuclear region and the spiral arms. The
huge number of H II regions allowed the construction of a number of
independent luminosity functions at different distances to the nucleus.
The slope of the luminosity function shows a marginal decrease with
increasing distance from the centre, which could indicate a gradual
change towards shallower IMF slopes with increasing galactocentric
distance, or an evolutionary effect.