Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter Stars

Thursday, 16 September 2021, 09:20   (virtual Stars)

Ionized superbubbles and their driving stellar association in PHANGS

Oleg Egorov, Kathryn Kreckel, Elizabeth Watkins, PHANGS team
ARI ZAH

Massive stars regulate the morphology and dynamics of the interstellar medium in galaxies via their ionizing radiation, winds and subsequent supernovae explosions. As a result of this feedback, multiple shells and superbubbles emerge in the ISM and can be clearly identified in the nearest galaxies, but our ability to quantify their properties in galaxies beyond the Local Group is often limited by angular resolution. Recent high-resolution PHANGS-MUSE data allow us to identify numerous expanding superbubbles based on their ionized gas kinematics and morphology. Matching PHANGS-HST data provides information about the young stellar associations related with the identified superbubbles, probable driving sources for their expansion. We present preliminary results of a comparison of the properties of the superbubbles and their underlying stellar association aiming to derive whether the kinematics of the ionized gas is driven by stellar feedback, and to measure the fraction of the mechanical energy retained in the superbubbles.