Physical properties of circumnuclear ionising clusters. I. NGC 7742

TL;DR

This study characterizes the physical properties of ionising clusters in NGC 7742's circumnuclear ring using integral field spectroscopy, revealing their ionisation sources, chemical abundances, and stellar populations.

Contribution

It provides detailed measurements of ionising clusters' physical and chemical properties in NGC 7742, including their masses, ages, and metallicities, using new IFS data.

Findings

Ionising clusters have masses around 3.5 x 10^4 solar masses.

Metallicities of regions are mostly below solar levels.

Clusters show young ages around 5 million years.

Abstract

This work aims to derive the physical properties of the CNSFRs in the ring of the face-on spiral NGC 7742 using IFS observations. We have selected 88 individual ionising clusters that power HII regions populating the ring of the galaxy that may have originated in a minor merger event. For the HII regions the rate of Lyman continuum photon emission is between 0.025 and 1.5 10$^{51}$ which points to these regions being ionised by star clusters. Their electron density, ionisation parameter, filling factor and ionised hydrogen mass show values consistent with those found in other studies of similar regions and their metal abundances as traced by sulphur have been found to be between 0.25 and 2.4 times solar, with most regions showing values slightly below solar. The equivalent temperature of the ionising clusters is relatively low, below 40000 K which is consistent with the high elemental abundances derived. The young stellar population of the clusters has contributions of ionising and non-ionising populations with ages around 5 Ma and 300 Ma respectively. The masses of ionising clusters once corrected for the contribution of underlying non-ionising populations were found to have a mean value of 3.5 $\times$ 10$^4$ M$_{\odot}$, comparable to the mass of ionised gas and about 20 \% of the corrected photometric mass.