ALMA observations of 99 GHz free-free and H40alpha line emission from star formation in the centre of NGC 253
GalISM
George J. Bendo
Date Submitted
2015-03-31 14:19:53
Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics
Robert J. Beswick, Michael J. D'Cruze, Clive Dickinson, Gary A. Fuller, Thomas W. B. Muxlow (Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics)
We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of 99.02 GHz free-free and H40alpha emission from the centre of the nearby starburst galaxy NGC 253. We calculate electron temperatures of 3700-4500 K for the photoionized gas, which agrees with previous measurements, and we measure a star formation rate of 1.73+/-0.12 M_solar/yr within the central 20x10 arcsec, which fall within the broad range of measurements from previous millimetre and radio observations but which are better constrained. We also demonstrate that the dust opacities are ~3 dex higher than inferred from previous near-infrared data, which illustrates the benefits of using millimetre star formation tracers in very dusty sources.