The Hyper-Stable Disc of UGC 8839

TL;DR

This study investigates the low star formation activity in UGC 8839, revealing it as a hyper-stable, dark matter dominated galaxy with unique outer disk star formation, and compares it to similar galaxies to understand its structure.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of a hyper-stable disc in UGC 8839, showing its star formation features are consistent with a dark matter dominated, stable disk, and compares its HII region distribution with other galaxies.

Findings

UGC 8839's star formation is likely due to a hyper-stable, dark matter dominated disc.

The HII region luminosity function suggests the complex is a native structure.

HII regions in UGC 8839 are more prevalent at larger galactocentric radii.

Abstract

The low surface brightness (LSB) spiral UGC 8839 is nearly devoid of star formation aside from a large HII region complex located in the extreme outer disc. In order to understand the origin and nature of this complex, we compare new H{\alpha} and archival broad-band images of UGC 8839 to similar data for four other spiral galaxies. We conclude that the extreme off-axis star formation in UGC 8839 is likely due to a hyper-stable disc that is dark matter dominated at all radii, with the Toomre parameter reaching a minimum only in the extreme outer disc. Using analysis strategies designed to be particularly insensitive to the pitfalls of low-surface brightness objects and small number statistics, we determine that the presence of this complex in UGC 8839 is not exceptional when the HII region luminosity function is modelled by a power law, suggesting that it is a native structure and not a merging satellite. However, we find that the entire population of HII regions in UGC 8839 shows a preference for larger galactocentric radii when compared to HII regions in the other galaxies in our sample. UGC 8839 dramatically highlights the relationship between the baryonic/dark matter ratio and disk stability. A three-body interaction, similar to a scaled-down version of the interaction suspected to be responsible for Malin 1, is consistent with the extreme outer disk star formation that we see in the extended disk of UGC 8839.