UBVRI photometry of stellar structures throughout the disk of the barred Galaxy NGC 3367

Abstract

We report new detailed surface U, B, V, R, and I photometry of 81 stellar structures in the disk of the barred galaxy NGC 3367. The images show many different structures, indicating that star formation is going on in most parts of the disk. NGC 3367 is known to have a very high concentration of molecular gas distribution in the central regions of the galaxy and bipolar synchrotron emission from the nucleus, with two lobes (at 6 kpc) forming a triple structure similar to a radio galaxy. We have determined the U, B, V, R, and I magnitudes and U - B, B - V, U - V, and V - I colors for the central region (nucleus), a region which includes supernova 2003 AA, and 79 star associations throughout NGC 3367. The estimation of ages of star associations is very difficult due to several factors, among them the filling factor, metallicity, spatial distribution of each structure, and the fact that we estimated the magnitudes with a circular aperture of 16 pixels in diameter, equivalent to 6.8" similar to 1.4 kpc. However, even though the colors derived for NGC 3367 were similar to the colors expected of star clusters with theoretical evolutionary star tracks developed for the LMC and had a similar metallicity, NGC 3367 shows 56% of the observed structures with age type SWB I (a few tens of megayears), with seven sources outside the high surface brightness visible disk.