Physical properties of HII regions at sub-kpc scales using integral field spectroscopy on IC 342

TL;DR

This study uses integral field spectroscopy to analyze the physical properties of HII regions in IC 342 at sub-kiloparsec scales, providing detailed insights into ionized gas characteristics in a nearby galaxy.

Contribution

It presents the most comprehensive optical IFS dataset for IC 342 and demonstrates a pipeline for analyzing HII regions, comparable to larger galaxy samples.

Findings

Physical properties of IC 342's ionized gas are similar to those in galaxies with similar stellar mass.

Derived radial distributions of extinction, luminosity, and metallicity within HII regions.

Validated the use of IFS data for detailed analysis of nearby galaxy HII regions.

Abstract

In this study we use Integral Field Spectroscopic (IFS) observations for one of the closest galaxy to us, the grand design spiral IC 342, to derive physical properties of HII regions at sub-kpc scales. This IFS data represents, to our knowledge, the most comprehensive observational effort in the optical for this galaxy. The final IFS datacube consists of 349 individual pointings using the IFS instrumentation from the SDSS-IV MaNGA survey. Using a prototype of the data analysis pipeline that will be devoted to the SDSS-V Local Volume Mapper (LVM) survey, we measure different observables from the emission line in the optical. In particular, using the flux map of the H$\alpha$ emission line, we derive the location and sizes of H ii region candidates for IC 342. Using the integrated flux for different emission lines within each region, we derived the radial distribution of different physical properties from the ionized gas (e.g., optical extinction, H$\alpha$ luminosity, oxygen abundance, etc). Comparing with larger samples of galaxies with IFS data, our results suggest that physical properties of the ionized gas of IC 342 are similar to galaxies with similar stellar mass in the nearby universe.