A Sinfoni View Of Circum-nuclear Starburst Rings

Boeker, Torsten; Schinnerer, E.; Knapen, J.
Bibliographical reference

American Astronomical Society Meeting 208, #14.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.94

Advertised on:
6
2006
Number of authors
3
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
We will present first results from a recent study of circum-nuclear star formation in nearby spiral galaxies, undertaken with the SINFONI integral-field spectrograph on the VLT. The observations yield R 1500 spectra covering both H- and K-band for a contiguous (8 x 8) sqarcsec field of view. Emission line maps reveal in unprecedented detail the distribution of star formation "hot spots". The hot spot spectra yield the relative age distribution along the ring from stellar population synthesis methods. We will briefly discuss how the results relate to competing theories for the mechanism(s) that govern the evolution of star formation in the nuclei of disk galaxies.