Abstract
ABSTRACT Integral field units enable resolved studies of a large number of star-forming regions across entire nearby galaxies, providing insight on the conversion of gas into stars and the feedback from the emerging stellar populations over unprecedented dynamic ranges in terms of spatial scale, star-forming region properties, and environments. We use the Very Large Telescope (VLT) MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) legacy data set covering the central 35 arcmin2 (∼12 kpc2) of the nearby galaxy NGC 300 to quantify the effect of stellar feedback as a function of the local galactic environment. We extract spectra from emission line regions identified within dendrograms, combine emission line ratios and line widths to distinguish between ${\rm H\, \small {II}}$ regions, planetary nebulae, and supernova remnants, and compute their ionized gas properties, gas-phase oxygen abundances, and feedback-related pressure terms. For the ${\rm H\, \small {II}}$ regions, we find that the direct radiation pressure (Pdir) and the pressure of the ionized gas ($P_{{\rm H\, \small {II}}}$) weakly increase towards larger galactocentric radii, i.e. along the galaxy’s (negative) abundance and (positive) extinction gradients. While the increase of $P_{{\rm H\, \small {II}}}$ with galactocentric radius is likely due to higher photon fluxes from lower-metallicity stellar populations, we find that the increase of Pdir is likely driven by the combination of higher photon fluxes and enhanced dust content at larger galactocentric radii. In light of the above, we investigate the effect of increased pre-supernova feedback at larger galactocentric distances (lower metallicities and increased dust mass surface density) on the ISM, finding that supernovae at lower metallicities expand into lower-density environments, thereby enhancing the impact of supernova feedback.
Highlights
Stellar feedback is a multi-scale phenomenon, arising from small scales of the feedback-driving stars and their natal clouds but having profound effects up to the scales of entire galaxies
We describe how emission line regions are identified and how they are separated into the three main categories, these being H II regions, supernova remnants (SNRs), and planetary nebulae (PNe)
The second reason is that determining the center, size, and boundaries of H II regions at spatial resolutions of roughly 7−10 pc is very subjective and very much dependent on the method that is being used, where regions are in close vicinity or even overlap, meaning that H II region catalogs of the same galaxy but from different papers can vary significantly
Summary
Stellar feedback is a multi-scale phenomenon, arising from small (pc) scales of the feedback-driving stars and their natal clouds but having profound effects up to the (kpc) scales of entire galaxies. The increasing availability of large fieldof-view, large wavelength coverage, and medium spectral resolution integral field unit (IFU) instruments has enabled the simultaneous study of the feedback-driving stellar populations and the feedbackaffected matter This has led to optical studies of the stellar and ionised gas properties and kinematics of entire spatiallyresolved star-forming regions in the Milky Way (e.g. McLeod et al 2015; Weilbacher et al 2015; McLeod et al 2016; Flagey et al 2020), the Magellanic Clouds The large spatial coverage (to cover most of the star-forming disc) available in the optical with MUSE but throughout the electromagnetic spectrum (e.g. Helou et al 2004; Westmeier et al 2011; Riener et al 2018; Kruijssen et al 2019; Schruba et al 2019) makes NGC 300 the ideal target for simultaneous resolved feedback, stellar population, and ISM studies.
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