DYNAMO Survey: An Upclose View of Clumpy Galaxies

We highlight recent results on the DYNAMO survey of turbulent, clumpy disks galaxies found at z=0.1. Bright star forming DYNAMO galaxies are found to be very similar in properties to star forming galaxies in the high redshift Universe. Typical star formation rates of turbulent DYNAMO galaxies range 10-80 M-circle dot yr(-1). Roughly 2/3 of DYNAMO galaxies have H alpha kinematics that are consistent with rotation. The typical gas velocity dispersion of DYNAMO galaxies is sigma(H alpha) similar to 20 - 60 km s(-1). We show that, when convolved to the same resolution, maps of H alpha emission in DYNAMO galaxies have essentially identical morphology as that of z similar to 1 - 3 galaxies. Finally, DYNAMO galaxies have high molecular gas fractions f(mol) similar to 20 - 35%. We note that DYNAMO galaxies are not dwarfs, typical masses are M-star similar to 0.8 - 8 x 10(10) M-circle dot. These data are all consistent with a scenario in which despite being at relatively low redshift the DYNAMO galaxies are forming stars similarly to that observed in the high-redshift Universe, that is to say star formation is occurring in very massive (M-clump similar to 10(9) M-circle dot), very large (r(clump) similar to 300 pc) clumps of gas.