CLASSY V: The impact of aperture effects on the inferred nebular properties of local star-forming galaxies

TL;DR

This study investigates how different observational aperture sizes affect the measurement of nebular properties in local star-forming galaxies, finding that some properties remain stable while others vary with aperture, informing future galaxy studies.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of aperture effects on nebular diagnostics using multiple observational setups, including new LBT/MODS data, to improve interpretation of galaxy spectra.

Findings

Electron densities and metallicities are stable across apertures.

E(B-V) values decrease with increasing aperture size.

Nebular properties from small apertures are representative of larger regions.

Abstract

Strong nebular emission lines are an important diagnostic tool for tracing the evolution of star-forming galaxies across cosmic time. However, different observational setups can affect these lines, and the derivation of the physical nebular properties. We analyze 12 local star-forming galaxies from the COS Legacy Spectroscopy SurveY (CLASSY) to assess the impact of using different aperture combinations on the determination of the physical conditions and gas-phase metallicity. We compare optical spectra observed with the SDSS aperture, which has a 3" of diameter similar to COS, to IFU and longslit spectra, including new LBT/MODS observations of five CLASSY galaxies. We calculate the reddening, electron densities and temperatures, metallicities, star formation rates, and equivalent widths (EWs). We find that measurements of the electron densities and temperatures, and metallicity remained roughly constant with aperture size, indicating that the gas conditions are relatively uniform for this sample. However, using the IFU observations of 3 galaxies, we find that the E(B-V) values derived from the Balmer ratios decrease ( by up to 53%) with increasing aperture size. The values change most significantly in the center of the galaxies, and level out near the COS aperture diameter of 2.5". We examine the relative contributions from the gas and stars using the H$\alpha$ and [OIII] $\lambda$5007 EWs as a function of aperture light fraction, but find little to no variations within a given galaxy. These results imply that the optical spectra provide nebular properties appropriate for the FUV CLASSY spectra, even when narrow 1.0" long-slit observations are used.