Shaken, Not Stirred: The Disrupted Disk of the Starburst Galaxy NGC 253

Abstract

Near-infrared images obtained with the CFHT WIRCam are used to investigate the recent history of the nearby Sculptor Group spiral NGC 253. The distribution of stars in the disk is lop-sided, in the sense that the projected density of AGB stars in the north east portion of the disk between 10 and 20 kpc from the galaxy center is ~ 0.5 dex higher than on the opposite side of the galaxy. With the exception of the central 2 kpc, the north east portion of the disk appears to have been the site of the highest levels of star-forming activity in the galaxy during the past ~ 0.1 Gyr. Diffuse stellar structures are found in the periphery of the disk, and the most prominent of these is to the south and east of the galaxy. Bright AGB stars are detected out to 15 kpc above the disk plane, and these are part of a diffusely distributed, flattened extraplanar component. Comparisons between observed and model luminosity functions suggest that the extraplanar regions contain stars that formed throughout much of the age of the Universe. It is suggested that the disk of NGC 253 was disrupted by a tidal encounter with a now defunct companion. The ages of the youngest extraplanar stars suggests that the event that produced the extraplanar population, and presumably induced the starburst, occured within the past ~ 0.2 Gyr.

To appear in the ApJ

References in corpus (20)

• The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury
• The Haunted Halos of Andromeda and Triangulum: A panorama of galaxy formation in action
• The role of stellar feedback in the formation of galaxies
• The Metal-Poor Halo of the Andromeda Spiral Galaxy (M31)
• The ghost of a dwarf galaxy: fossils of the hierarchical formation of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 5907
• A kinematically selected, metal-poor stellar halo in the outskirts of M31
• Investigating the Andromeda Stream: III. A Young Shell System in M31
• The Recent Star Formation Histories of M81 Group Dwarf Irregular Galaxies
• An almost head-on collision as the origin of two off-centre rings in the Andromeda galaxy
• Discovery of a Giant Stellar Tidal Stream Around the Disk Galaxy NGC 4013
• Was the Andromeda Stream Produced by a Disk Galaxy?
• The Extended Star Formation History of the Andromeda Spheroid at Twenty One Kiloparsecs on the Minor Axis
• Relics of structure formation: extra-planar gas and high-velocity clouds around the Andromeda Galaxy
• The Disk and Extraplanar Environment of NGC 247
• The origin of abundance gradients in the Milky Way: the predictions of different models
• The Stellar Content of the Post-Starburst S0 Galaxy NGC 5102
• The Identification of New Stellar Groupings in the M81 Debris Field
• The assessment of the near infrared identification of Carbon stars. I. The Local Group galaxies WLM, IC 10 and NGC 6822
• And the Rest: The Stellar Archeological Record of M82 Outside the Central Starburst
• An Arc of Young Stars in the Halo of M82

Cited by in corpus (27)

• Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays
• Diverse Stellar Haloes in Nearby Milky Way-Mass Disc Galaxies
• The GHOSTS survey. II. The diversity of Halo Color and Metallicity Profiles of Massive Disk Galaxies
• Spatially resolved optical IFU spectroscopy of the inner superwind of NGC 253
• Active Galactic Nuclei, Neutrinos, and Interacting Cosmic Rays in NGC 253 & NGC 1068
• Acceleration of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays in starburst superwinds
• The Resolved Stellar Halo of NGC 253
• A panoramic VISTA of the stellar halo of NGC 253
• The Recent Stellar Archeology of M31 - The Nearest Red Disk Galaxy
• The NIR structure of the barred galaxy NGC253 from VISTA
• Satellite accretion in action: a tidally disrupting dwarf spheroidal around the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 253
• The Young Open Clusters King 12, NGC 7788, and NGC 7790: Pre-Main Sequence Stars and Extended Stellar Halos
• Inner Polar Rings and Disks: Observed Properties
• The Compact Star-Forming Complex at the Heart of NGC 253
• The Stellar Archeology of the M33 Disk: Recent Star-Forming History and Constraints on the Timing of an Interaction with M31
• Seeing Red in M32: Constraints on the Stellar Content from Near- and Mid-Infrared Observations and Applications for Studies of More Distant Galaxies
• Exploring the superwind mechanism for generating ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays using large-scale modeling of starbursts
• The Void in the Sculptor Group Spiral Galaxy NGC 247
• Young Stars at the Edge: Stellar Clustering in the Outer Regions of the M33 Disk
• The Open Cluster NGC 2437 (Messier 46)
• Resolved Stellar Populations as Tracers of Outskirts
• The Lop-sided Spiral Galaxy NGC 247: Clues to a Possible Interaction with NGC 253
• The Hot Interstellar Medium
• A Luminous X-ray Flare From The Nucleus of The Dormant Bulgeless Spiral Galaxy NGC 247
• Identification and analysis of the young population in the starburst galaxy NGC 253
• On the origin of the anomalous gas, non-declining rotation curve and disc asymmetries in NGC253
• Tracing satellite planes in the Sculptor group: II. Discovery of five faint dwarf galaxies in the DESI Legacy Survey