Searching within Galaxies for the Earliest Signs of Quenching With Spatially Resolved Star Formation Histories in UVCANDELS Galaxies at z < 0.3

Authors

• Charlotte Olsen, CUNY New York City College of TechnologyFollow
• Eric Gawiser, Rutgers University
• Charlotte Welker, CUNY New York City College of TechnologyFollow
• Harry Teplitz, California Institute of Technology
• Kartheik Iyer, Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Astrophysics
• Xin Wang, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Marc Rafelski, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Rogier A. Windhorst, Arizona State University
• Anton Koekemoer, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Anahita Alavi, California Institute of Technology
• Ben Sunnquist, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Norman Grogin, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Yicheng Guo, University of Missouri
• Christopher J. Conselice, University of Manchester
• L. Y. Aaron Yung, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Kalina Nedkova, Johns Hopkins University
• Bahram Mobasher, University of California, Riverside
• Ray A. Lucas, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Vihang Mehta, California Institute of Technology
• Y. Sophia Dai, Chinese Academy of Sciences South America Center for Astronomy (CASSACA)
• Jonathan P. Gardner, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-6-2026

Abstract

Understanding the complicated processes that regulate star formation and cause a galaxy to become quiescent is key to our comprehension of galaxy evolution. We used eight well-resolved star-forming z < 0.3 galaxies from the UVCANDELS survey, where a total of 10 Hubble Space Telescope bands, including UV follow-up in UVIS/F275W, allow us to reconstruct the star formation histories (SFHs) of regions across each galaxy. This approach provides a powerful tool to explore the spatiotemporal connection between star formation and galaxy evolution. The spatial and temporal profiles of stellar mass and star formation rate (SFR) surface density were obtained from the SFHs of these regions. We measure scaling relations and projected radial profiles of regions within each galaxy at the time of observation and at 1 Gyr lookback time, noting possible trends in the evolution. By comparing the change in star formation over time, we can infer the timing and location of star formation and see early signs of star formation shutting off before quenching occurs. We compared the SFR density–stellar mass density scaling relations for individual galaxies as they evolve from 1 Gyr lookback time. The correlation lines pivot around a log-stellar mass surface density of 7.25 [M⊙ kpc−2], which may be evidence of a self-regulating process on these scales. Radial profiles of the galaxy logarithmic specific SFR (sSFR) show an overall decrease over 1 Gyr, but five galaxies show a greater change in log(sSFR) at the outskirts than the center, indicating a possible early onset of quenching in these galaxies.

Comments

This article was originally published in The Astrophysical Journal, available at https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae4eba

This work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).