PHANGS-JWST First Results: The Influence of Stellar Clusters on PAHs in Nearby Galaxies

Abstract

We present a comparison of theoretical predictions of dust continuum and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission with new JWST observations in three nearby galaxies: NGC 628, NGC 1365, and NGC 7496. Our analysis focuses on a total of 1063 compact stellar clusters and 2654 stellar associations previously characterized by HST in the three galaxies. We find that the distributions and trends in the observed PAH-focused infrared colors generally agree with theoretical expectations, and that the bulk of the observations is more aligned with models of larger, ionized PAHs. These JWST data usher in a new era of probing interstellar dust and studying how the intense radiation fields near stellar clusters and associations play a role in shaping the physical properties of PAHs.

8 pages, accepted as part of a PHANGS-JWST Focus Issue to appear in ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (15)

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• PHANGS-JWST First Results: Destruction of the PAH molecules in HII regions probed by JWST and MUSE
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: Mid-infrared emission traces both gas column density and heating at 100 pc scales
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: Mapping the 3.3 micron Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Vibrational Band in Nearby Galaxies with NIRCam Medium Bands
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: The Dust Filament Network of NGC 628 and its Relation to Star Formation Activity
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• Extreme Starlight Polarization Efficiency Toward $\zeta$ Ophiuchi: A Case for Line-of-Sight Foreground Subtraction
• Star Formation Beyond the Optical Disk : The Low-Density Outskirts of NGC2090