IUE observations of star formation in a cooling flow

Abstract

Star formation in cooling flows is usually found to have an initial mass function deficient in massive stars, but the center of the cooling flow in Hydra A has been shown to contain a significant number of early type stars. Here we use UV-spectra obtained with the IUE satellite together with ground based data to constrain the nature of this young population. The data is compatible with a burst of star formation with a Salpeter-like initial mass function, a burst age of about 4 107 yr, and a total mass ≈ 108 M⊙.