Photometry of young starlike objects in the dwarf galaxy NGC 2976— age and metallicity

✍ Scribed by P. Notni; I.D. Karachentsev; L.N. Makarova

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 389 KB
• Volume: 322
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0004-6337
• DOI: 10.1002/1521-3994(200106)322:2<73::aid-asna73>3.0.co;2-h

✦ Synopsis

We present BVIc photometry of the brightest stars and compact star clusters in NGC 2976, a dwarf galaxy in the interacting M81/M82 group. Deep CCD images of the galaxy were obtained with the 6m-Telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory (Russia) at arcsec resolution. About 290 young stars and concentrated young clusters were measured. Supplementary data in the ultraviolet are taken from the literature. The extinction to the measured objects is comparatively low, E(B -V ) ∼ 0.15 .. 0.20 mag. We estimate the ages of youngest resolved stars and concentrated star clusters to be ∼ 5 • 10 6 years. This population is concentrated in a broad stripe facing M81. In the central disk the population is a bit older, about 8 • 10 6 years, this may be a hint to an outward spreading star formation process. The metallicity of the disk population is estimated as solar (z∼ 0.02) from a fitting to Padova theoretical stellar isochrones.