AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 134 Irregular Galaxies
Poster, Wednesday, 9:20am-6:30pm, January 11, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[134.04] H I maps of Local Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies

C. A. Garland (Castleton State College), D. J. Pisano (Naval Research Lab), J. P. Williams (University of Hawaii), R. Guzman (University of Florida), F. J. Castander (IEEC)

We present resolved HI maps of four local Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies (LCBGs)--Mrk 297, Mrk 314, Mrk 325, and SDSS J0834+0139--as well as results from the literature for a fifth LCBG, Mrk 538. These galaxies are a sub-sample of 20 nearby LCBGs surveyed with single-dish telescopes in HI and multiple transitions of CO. These ~L*, blue, high surface brightness, starbursting galaxies were selected using the same criteria used to define LCBGs at higher redshifts. We have been focusing on using our atomic and molecular gas observations to characterize this galaxy population and constrain evolutionary possibilities.

We have used these resolved HI maps to separate the HI emission from target galaxies and their companions, in order to improve the accuracy of our gas mass estimates. For this sub-sample of LCBGs, we find that we have overestimated the mass of atomic hydrogen in two galaxies by a significant amount, possibly as much as 75%, as compared to the single-dish estimates. Both galaxies are interacting with companions with significant H I emission. We also find that our single-dish observations of HI may have overestimated the dynamical masses of these galaxies. We discuss how these findings may affect the conclusions drawn from our single-dish surveys regarding the characteristics and evolutionary possibilities of LCBGs. We note that these are the findings of a pilot project; we have applied for time to acquire resolved HI observations of the remainder of our sample of 20 LCBGs.


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