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Session 4 - Low Luminosity AGN and Starburst Galaxies.
Display session, Monday, June 10
Tripp Commons,
The Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT) has obtained far--ultraviolet (FUV, \lambda \sim 1500 Åimages of several galaxies harboring starbursts and/or AGN. FUV images highlight hot, young massive stars and thus provide a unique opportunity to directly study ongoing massive star formation; the UIT images indicate that several objects contain sites of intense, relatively unobscured, massive star formation activity. We are using these images together with longer wavelength data to determine the star formation histories of these regions.
We have recently obtained complementary near--infrared broad--band images of these galaxies. These images map the spatial distribution of both the underlying stellar population and recent sites of star formation. Here, we present a morphological comparison of the FUV and near--infrared emission from selected systems. The locations of star forming regions observed in the FUV are compared to the underlying morphology of the galaxy to determine how stellar bars, interactions, and spiral density waves affect the propagation of star formation. A comparison of the FUV and near--infrared morphologies also constrains the ages, optical depths, and initial mass functions (IMFs) of star forming regions. This project provides the first detailed comparison of the UV and near--infrared properties of star forming and active galaxies.
