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D.M. Elmegreen (Vassar Coll.), J.A. Frogel (OSU), P. Eskridge (Minn. State U.), R.W. Pogge (OSU), A. Gallagher (Vassar Coll.), J. Iams (Williams Coll.)
Anemic galaxies have less prominent star formation than normal galaxies of the same type. Previous studies showed that overall they are deficient in atomic hydrogen but not in molecular hydrogen. We measured B-band and J-band arm-interarm contrasts for 30 anemic and normal spiral galaxies from the Ohio State University Bright Spiral Galaxy Survey to determine whether there are systemic differences within a given Hubble type and arm class. We find that the arm-interarm contrast depends most strongly on the presence or absence of a density wave, as indicated by the galaxy's arm class, regardless of whether or not the galaxy is anemic. There is no correlation between the atomic hydrogen content and the arm-interarm contrast in the older (near-infrared) stellar light, in accord with previous conclusions that recent tidal stripping accounts for the atomic gas depletion of anemic galaxies. In blue light, the anemic grand design galaxies lack the star formation peaks characteristic of normal grand design galaxies. From an examination of published radial gas distributions, we show that not only the atomic but also the molecular gas is below a critical density for star formation in the anemic galaxies.
The OSU Survey project was supported by grants AST-9217716 and AST-9617006 from the National Science Foundation.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.