The Weak Carbon Monoxide Emission in an Extremely Metal Poor Galaxy, Sextans
نویسندگان
چکیده
Carbon monoxide (CO) is one of the primary coolants of gas and an easily accessible tracer of molecular gas in spiral galaxies but it is unclear if CO plays a similar role in metal poor dwarfs. We carried out a deep observation with IRAM 30 m to search for CO emission by targeting the brightest far-IR peak in a nearby extremely metal poor galaxy, Sextans A, with 7% Solar metallicity. A weak CO J=1-0 emission is seen, which is already faint enough to place a strong constraint on the conversion factor (αCO) from the CO luminosity to the molecular gas mass that is derived from the spatially resolved dust mass map. The αCO is at least seven hundred times the Milky Way value. This indicates that CO emission is exceedingly weak in extremely metal poor galaxies, challenging its role as a coolant in these galaxies. Subject headings: galaxies: dwarf – submillimeter: ISM – galaxies: ISM
منابع مشابه
The Weak Carbon Monoxide Emission in an Extremely Metal-poor Galaxy, Sextans A
Carbon monoxide (CO) is one of the primary coolants of gas and an easily accessible tracer of molecular gas in spiral galaxies, but it is unclear if CO plays a similar role in metal-poor dwarfs. We carried out a deep observation with IRAM 30 m to search for CO emission by targeting the brightest far-IR peak in a nearby extremely metal-poor galaxy, Sextans A, with 7% solar metallicity. A margina...
متن کاملChemical composition of extremely metal-poor stars in the Sextans dwarf spheroidal galaxy
Context. Individual stars in dwarf spheroidal galaxies around the Milky Way Galaxy have been studied both photometrically and spectroscopically. Extremely metal-poor stars among them are very valuable because they should record the early enrichment in the Local Group. However, our understanding of these stars is very limited because detailed chemical abundance measurements are needed from high ...
متن کاملCarbon monoxide in an extremely metal-poor galaxy
Extremely metal-poor galaxies with metallicity below 10% of the solar value in the local universe are the best analogues to investigating the interstellar medium at a quasi-primitive environment in the early universe. In spite of the ongoing formation of stars in these galaxies, the presence of molecular gas (which is known to provide the material reservoir for star formation in galaxies such a...
متن کاملLow Metallicity Stars in Our Galaxy
The advent of 8 m class telescopes has allowed the detailed spectroscopic study of sizeable numbers of extremely metal-poor Galactic stars which are the witnesses of the formation of the early Galaxy. Their chemical composition displays some distinctive trends which should provide a strong constraint on the physical nature of the first generation(s) of stars and on their nucleosynthetic output....
متن کاملAtomic carbon in Arp 220
We present detections of the 3 P 1 ? 3 P 0 ne-structure line of neutral carbon, and of the J = 3 ? 2 rotational line of carbon monoxide in the ultraluminous infrared galaxy Arp 220, obtained at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory. C I emission in Arp 220 is found to be at the expected level in relation to the strong FIR dust emission and to the CO emission, whereas the C II emission seen by I...
متن کامل