The Nature of Starbursts: III. The Spatial Distribution of Star Formation

TL;DR

This study maps recent star formation in fifteen dwarf galaxies, revealing a wide range of spatial distributions from centralized to diffuse, and suggests potential biases in how starbursts are traditionally identified.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the spatial distribution of star formation in dwarf galaxies, highlighting the diversity and potential observational biases.

Findings

Star formation distribution varies widely among galaxies.

Most starbursts are not exclusively centrally concentrated.

Traditional tracers may bias starburst identification.

Abstract

We map the spatial distribution of recent star formation over a few x 100 Myr timescales in fifteen starburst dwarf galaxies using the location of young blue helium burning stars identified from optically resolved stellar populations in archival Hubble Space Telescope observations. By comparing the star formation histories from both the high surface brightness central regions and the diffuse outer regions, we measure the degree to which the star formation has been centrally concentrated during the galaxies' starbursts, using three different metrics for the spatial concentration. We find that the galaxies span a full range in spatial concentration, from highly centralized to broadly distributed star formation. Since most starbursts have historically been identified by relatively short timescale star formation tracers (e.g., Halpha emission), there could be a strong bias towards classifying only those galaxies with recent, centralized star formation as starbursts, while missing starbursts that are spatially distributed.