Spatial Distributions of Cold and Warm Interstellar Dust in M101 Resolved with AKARI/Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS)

TL;DR

This study uses AKARI/FIS far-infrared imaging to analyze the spatial distribution of cold and warm interstellar dust in M101, revealing detailed structures and star formation activity patterns.

Contribution

It provides high-resolution spatial maps of dust temperature components and links dust distribution to star formation regions in M101.

Findings

Cold dust concentrated near galaxy center

Warm dust correlates with spiral arms and bright spots

Active star formation in bar and outer disk regions

Abstract

The nearby face-on spiral galaxy M101 has been observed with the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) onboard AKARI. The far-infrared four-band images reveal fine spatial structures of M101, which include global spiral patterns, giant HII regions embedded in outer spiral arms, and a bar-like feature crossing the center. The spectral energy distribution of the whole galaxy shows the presence of the cold dust component (18 K) in addition to the warm dust component (55 K). The distribution of the cold dust is mostly concentrated near the center, and exhibits smoothly distributed over the entire extent of the galaxy, whereas the distribution of the warm dust indicates some correlation with the spiral arms, and has spotty structures such as four distinctive bright spots in the outer disk in addition to a bar-like feature near the center tracing the CO intensity map. The star-formation activity of the giant HII regions that spatially correspond to the former bright spots is found to be significantly higher than that of the rest of the galaxy. The latter warm dust distribution implies that there are significant star-formation activities in the entire bar filled with molecular clouds. Unlike our Galaxy, M101 is a peculiar normal galaxy with extraordinary active star-forming regions.