Friday

Historically, the distribution of metallicities in galaxies have been expressed as simply a radial gradient. However, with the advent of high spatial resolution integral field spectroscopy, we can now move beyond this and map the azimuthal metallicity variations of galaxies. Using data from the PHANGS-MUSE survey, I will show full 2-dimensional maps of gas-phase metallicity for 19 nearby galaxies. I will show that in all cases, modelling this second-order term leads to a better description of the data, and in cases where we are not hampered by low number statistics, to a significant azimuthal variation.

As part of this fitting, we calculate a characteristic mixing scale length for the ISM. I will correlate this with global galaxy parameters (e.g. stellar mass, SFR), and show how the mixing scale depends on the overall properties of the galaxy. Finally, I will use these maps, along with environmental masks to search for abundance differences in different galactic environments. I will show that, typically, centres of galaxies display elevated metallicities compared to the disc and spiral ams, and that this is strongly dependent on the mass of the galaxy.