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Are Low Surface Brightness Discs Young?

1996/09/12 by Paolo Padoan, Raúl Jiménez, Raul Jimenez +5
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Adhesion, Friction, and Surface Interactions #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Surface Roughness and Optical Measurements #Tribology and Lubrication Engineering #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9609091

email [email protected]

arxiv created 1996/09/12 · openalex publication_date 1996/09/12 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We reconsider the problem of the age of the stellar discs of late-type Low Surface Brightness (LSB) galaxies by making use of a new IMF recently derived from numerical fluid dynamical simulations (Padoan, Nordlund and Jones, 1997). While a Miller-Scalo IMF cannot adequately describe the photometric properties of LSBs, when we apply the new Padoan et al. (1997) IMF to a simple exponential disc model with parameters appropriate to LSBs, we get excellent fits of the colors and color gradients. We then conclude that: a) The star formation history of LSB disc galaxies can be described by an initial burst of a few times 107 yr followed by a quiescent period with only sporadic star formation; b) LSBs' discs are not young. The age of the LSB disc galaxies for which colors have been measured are all larger than about 10 Gyr.

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