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Published February 20, 2023 | public
Journal Article Metadata-only

PHANGS–JWST First Results: The Dust Filament Network of NGC 628 and Its Relation to Star Formation Activity

Thilker, David A. ORCID icon
Lee, Janice C. ORCID icon
Deger, Sinan ORCID icon
Barnes, Ashley T. ORCID icon
Bigiel, Frank ORCID icon
Boquien, Médéric ORCID icon
Cao, Yixian ORCID icon
Chevance, Mélanie ORCID icon
Dale, Daniel A. ORCID icon
Egorov, Oleg V. ORCID icon
Glover, Simon C. O. ORCID icon
Grasha, Kathryn ORCID icon
Henshaw, Jonathan D. ORCID icon
Klessen, Ralf S. ORCID icon
Koch, Eric ORCID icon
Kruijssen, J. M. Diederik ORCID icon
Leroy, Adam K. ORCID icon
Lessing, Ryan A. ORCID icon
Meidt, Sharon E. ORCID icon
Pinna, Francesca ORCID icon
Querejeta, Miguel ORCID icon
Rosolowsky, Erik ORCID icon
Sandstrom, Karin M. ORCID icon
Schinnerer, Eva ORCID icon
Smith, Rowan J. ORCID icon
Watkins, Elizabeth J. ORCID icon
Williams, Thomas G. ORCID icon
Anand, Gagandeep S. ORCID icon
Belfiore, Francesco ORCID icon
Blanc, Guillermo A. ORCID icon
Chandar, Rupali ORCID icon
Congiu, Enrico ORCID icon
Emsellem, Eric ORCID icon
Groves, Brent ORCID icon
Kreckel, Kathryn ORCID icon
Larson, Kirsten L. ORCID icon
Liu, Daizhong ORCID icon
Pessa, Ismael ORCID icon
Whitmore, Bradley C. ORCID icon

Abstract

PHANGS–JWST mid-infrared (MIR) imaging of nearby spiral galaxies has revealed ubiquitous filaments of dust emission in intricate detail. We present a pilot study to systematically map the dust filament network (DFN) at multiple scales between 25 and 400 pc in NGC 628. MIRI images at 7.7, 10, 11.3, and 21 μm of NGC 628 are used to generate maps of the filaments in emission, while PHANGS–HST B-band imaging yields maps of dust attenuation features. We quantify the correspondence between filaments traced by MIR thermal continuum/polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission and filaments detected via extinction/scattering of visible light; the fraction of MIR flux contained in the DFN; and the fraction of H ii regions, young star clusters, and associations within the DFN. We examine the dependence of these quantities on the physical scale at which the DFN is extracted. With our highest-resolution DFN maps (25 pc filament width), we find that filaments in emission and attenuation are cospatial in 40% of sight lines, often exhibiting detailed morphological agreement; that ∼30% of the MIR flux is associated with the DFN; and that 75%–80% of the star formation in H ii regions and 60% of the mass in star clusters younger than 5 Myr are contained within the DFN. However, the DFN at this scale is anticorrelated with looser associations of stars younger than 5 Myr identified using PHANGS–HST near-UV imaging. We discuss the impact of these findings on studies of star formation and the interstellar medium, and the broad range of new investigations enabled by multiscale maps of the DFN.

Additional Information

© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. This work was carried out as part of the PHANGS collaboration. Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA JWST and Hubble Space Telescopes. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST and NASA contract NAS 5-26555 for HST. The JWST observations are associated with program 2107, and those from HST with program 15454 Based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory under ESO programmes 094.C-0623 (PI: Kreckel), 095.C-0473, 098.C-0484 (PI: Blanc), 1100.B-0651 (PHANGS–MUSE; PI: Schinnerer), as well as 094.B-0321 (MAGNUM; PI: Marconi), 099.B-0242, 0100.B-0116, 098.B-0551 (MAD; PI: Carollo) and 097.B-0640 (TIMER; PI: Gadotti). We acknowledge the usage of the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System. 43 D.A.T. acknowledges funding support from STScI via JWST-GO-02107.002-A. E.W.K. acknowledges support from the Smithsonian Institution as a Submillimeter Array (SMA) Fellow and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. J.M.D.K. gratefully acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program via the ERC Starting Grant MUSTANG (grant agreement number 714907). COOL Research DAO is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization supporting research in astrophysics aimed at uncovering our cosmic origins. E.J.W. acknowledges the funding provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—Project-ID 138713538—SFB 881 ("The Milky Way System," subproject P1). M.C. gratefully acknowledges funding from the DFG through an Emmy Noether Research Group (grant number CH2137/1-1). M.B. acknowledges support from FONDECYT regular grant 1211000 and by the ANID BASAL project FB210003. T.G.W. and E.S. acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 694343). E.R. acknowledges the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), funding reference number RGPIN-2022-03499. F.B. would like to acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No.726384/Empire) K.G. is supported by the Australian Research Council through the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellowship DE220100766 funded by the Australian Government. K.G. is supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), through project number CE170100013. R.S.K. acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council via the ERC Synergy Grant "ECOGAL" (project ID 855130), from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) via the Collaborative Research Center "The Milky Way System" (SFB 881—funding ID 138713538—subprojects A1, B1, B2, and B8) and from the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence (EXC 2181-390900948) "STRUCTURES," funded by the German Excellence Strategy. R.S.K. also thanks the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action for funding in the project "MAINN" (funding ID 50OO2206). G.A.B. acknowledges the support from ANID Basal project FB210003. M.Q. acknowledges support from the Spanish grant PID2019-106027GA-C44, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. E.C. acknowledges support from ANID Basal projects ACE210002 and FB210003. S.D. is supported by funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 101018897 CosmicExplorer). K.K. and O.E. gratefully acknowledge funding from DFG in the form of an Emmy Noether Research Group (grant number KR4598/2-1, PI Kreckel). Facilities: HST - Hubble Space Telescope satellite, JWST - , VLT:Yepun - . Software: astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013,2018), numpy (Harris et al. 2020), matplotlib (Hunter 2007), FilFinder (v1.7.2; Koch & Rosolowsky 2015)

Additional details

Identifiers Funding Dates
Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 25, 2023