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L.A. Valencic, K.D. Gordon, G.C. Clayton (Louisiana State University)
Starburst galaxies are seen at high redshift and, as a result, observations of such galaxies are limited in spatial and spectral resolution. The study of local starburst galaxies helps in understanding these high redshift galaxies as well as the general star formation mechanism at work in starbursts. To this end, we have obtained images of NGC 5253 from the Hubble Space Telescope Archive (ultraviolet/optical) and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (near-infrared). We have done photometry of individual starburst clusters and fit their spectral energy distributions using a starburst model which includes stars, gas, and dust. The resulting distribution of the best fit starburst model parameters (star formation rate, cluster mass, dust content, dust geometry, etc.) are used to understand the history of the starburst in NGC 5253.