Hα³: An Hα Imaging Survey of HI-Selected Galaxies from ALFALFA. I. Catalogue in the Local Supercluster

published
2012
astrophysics
We present H\alpha^3 (acronym for H\alpha − \alpha\alpha), an H\alpha narrow-band imaging survey of \sim 400 galaxies selected from the HI Arecibo Legacy…
Authors

Giuseppe Gavazzi

Michele Fumagalli

Vincenzo Galardo

Francesco Grossetti

Alessandro Boselli

Riccardo Giovanelli

Martha P. Haynes

Silvia Fabello

Published

May 21, 2012

PDF | DOI

Abstract

We present H\(\alpha^3\) (acronym for H\(\alpha\)\(\alpha\)\(\alpha\)), an H\(\alpha\) narrow-band imaging survey of \(\sim\) 400 galaxies selected from the HI Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey (ALFALFA) in the Local Supercluster, including the Virgo cluster. By using hydrogen recombination lines as a tracer of recent star formation, we aim to investigate the relationships between atomic neutral gas and newly formed stars in different environments (cluster and field), morphological types (spirals and dwarfs), and over a wide range of stellar masses (\(\sim 10^{7.5} − 10^{11.5} M_\odot\)). We image in H\(\alpha\)+[NII] all the galaxies that contain more than \(10^7 M_\odot\) of neutral atomic hydrogen in the sky region 11h < RA < 16h; 4\(^\circ\) < Dec < 16\(^\circ\); 350 < cz < 2000 km s\(^{-1}\) using the San Pedro Martir 2m telescope. This survey provides a complete census of the star formation in HI rich galaxies of the local universe. We present the properties of the galaxy sample, together with H\(\alpha\) fluxes and equivalent widths. We find an excellent agreement between the fluxes determined from our images in apertures of 3 arcsec diameter and the fluxes derived from the SDSS spectral database. From the H\(\alpha\) fluxes corrected for galactic and internal extinction and for [NII] contamination we derive the global star formation rates (SFRs).

Citation

Gavazzi, G., Fumagalli, M., Galardo, V., Grossetti, F., Boselli, A., Giovanelli, R., Haynes, M. P. & Fabello, S. (2012). Hα³: An Hα Imaging Survey of HI-Selected Galaxies from ALFALFA. I. Catalogue in the Local Supercluster. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 545, A16.

BibTeX

@article{gavazzi2012halpha,
  title   = {H$\alpha^3$: An H$\alpha$ Imaging Survey of HI-Selected Galaxies from ALFALFA. I. Catalogue in the Local Supercluster},
  author  = {Gavazzi, Giuseppe and Fumagalli, Michele and Galardo, Vincenzo and Grossetti, Francesco and Boselli, Alessandro and Giovanelli, Riccardo and Haynes, Martha P. and Fabello, Silvia},
  journal = {Astronomy \& Astrophysics},
  volume  = {545},
  pages   = {A16},
  year    = {2012},
  doi     = {10.1051/0004-6361/201218788}
}