Re: [APML] Near and far... NGC 300 (8k x 8k)

[Mischa Schirmer <mischa@MPA-Garching.MPG.DE>]

Philipp,

> in H-Alpha the galaxy looks quite "sick".

I'm not sure what you mean with "sick" in this respect?
German slang?

> What is the reason for the big nebulae? Is the galaxy especially
> gas-rich? Is a star-burst going on?

That kinda stuff is not my everyday business, I can only speculate
about it. Certainly those HII-regions tell us that there is significant
star formation going on in NGC 300 for quite some time. The more 
ring shaped regions could be caused by several supernovae in the past
and/or strong stellar winds emanating from hot young star clusters
which formed some time ago in this nebula. The more irregular ones
seem to be associated with very luminous clusters, there is certainly
lots of star formation going on in them.
What is so unusual (in my eyes) is the enormous size of those HII regions.
I haven't yet dug my way thru all the publications about NGC 300,
certainly there one can find much more detailed explanations about 
what's going on in this galaxy.

Mischa

--  APML Archives at <http://astro.umsystem.edu/apml/>  ---
             Unsubscribe at <majordomo@seds.org>