The assembly history of NGC 1365 through chemical archaeology

Abstract

Galaxies build through infalling gas and galaxy mergers. Tracking the dynamical history of a galaxy from a single snapshot in time is notoriously difficult. We show that the dynamical history of a galaxy can be tracked using oxygen abundances as archeological tracers. We derive the gas-phase oxygen abundances for 4546 spaxels across the face-on spiral galaxy NGC~1365 at a spatial resolution of 175 pc, providing one of the most detailed chemical fossil records of a spiral galaxy outside our Milky Way. We apply IllustrisTNG cosmological simulations to analyse the chemical abundance distribution in a theoretical model for NGC~1365. In the model, the main disk oxygen abundance gradient formed earliest, 11.9-12.5 billion years ago via mergers with multiple dwarf galaxies. A steep inner bar gradient formed slowly over the last 12 billion years through enrichment from star formation triggered by the infall of gas into the nuclear regions. An extended ionized gas disk with flat oxygen abundances was assembled more recently (5.9-8.6 billion years ago) through a minor merger. This work indicates that cosmological simulations and ultra-high spatial resolution oxygen abundances together can provide an archaeological probe of the star formation and merger histories of spiral galaxies.

Accepted to Nature Astronomy June 2026 (nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02808-7)

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