Chemical Abundances of Young Massive Clusters in NGC 1313

We analyze spectroscopic observations of five young massive clusters (YMCs) in the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1313 to obtain detailed abundances from their integrated light. Our sample of YMCs was observed with the X-shooter spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope. We make use of theoretical isochron...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astronomical journal 2022-09, Vol.164 (3), p.89
Main Authors: Hernandez, Svea, Winch, Autumn, Larsen, Søren, James, Bethan L., Jones, Logan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abundance
Astronomy
Barred galaxies
Clusters
Galaxies
Metallicity
Spectroscopic observation
Spiral galaxies
Star & galaxy formation
Star formation
Titanium
Very Large Telescope
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Summary:We analyze spectroscopic observations of five young massive clusters (YMCs) in the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1313 to obtain detailed abundances from their integrated light. Our sample of YMCs was observed with the X-shooter spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope. We make use of theoretical isochrones to generate synthetic integrated-light spectra, iterating on the individual elemental abundances until converging on the best fit to the observations. We measure abundance ratios for [Ca/Fe], [Ti/Fe], [Mg/Fe], [Cr/Fe], and [Ni/Fe]. We estimate an Fe abundance gradient of −0.124 ± 0.034 dex kpc −1 , and a slightly shallower α gradient of −0.093 ± 0.009 dex kpc −1 . This is in contrast to previous metallicity studies that focused on the gas-phase abundances, which have found NGC 1313 to be the highest-mass barred galaxy known not to have a radial abundance gradient. We propose that the gradient discrepancy between the different studies originates from the metallicity calibrations used to study the gas-phase abundances. We also observe an age–metallicity trend that supports a scenario of constant star formation throughout the galaxy, with a possible burst in star formation in the southwest region where YMC NGC 1313–379 is located.
ISSN:0004-6256
1538-3881
DOI:10.3847/1538-3881/ac7ebe