The latest new paper is available from UW Massive Stars research group! Led by current UW grad student Debby Tran as part of their in-progress PhD thesis, the paper uses near-UV HST photometry of NGC 6946 – the infamous “Fireworks Galaxy” that has hosted more than ten core-collapse supernovae in the past 100 years – to map out the galaxy’s recent star formation history. Debby found that the global star formation rate was quite high ~25Myr ago but has markedly decreased since then. It’s an interesting result both for understanding ongoing star formation and for explaining this galaxy’s incredible burst of recent supernovae.

The paper is in press with the Astrophysical Journal; for now you can check it out on arXiv!