SDSS-V LVM: Spatial Resolution Effects on Diagnostic Diagrams in the Magellanic Clouds

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ID: 339490
2026
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Abstract
Abstract We investigate how spatial resolution affects emission-line diagnostics in the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds (SMC and LMC) using SDSS Local Volume Mapper (LVM) data obtained at and degraded to ~19, ~42, ~170 pc (for the SMC) and ~17, ~68, ~272 pc (for the LMC), respectively. We compare the distributions of strong emission-line ratios through 1D and 2D Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests. We deduced that diagnostics involving ionization and density sensitive ratios such as [OIII]λ5007/Hβ, [SII]λλ6717+6731/Hα and [NII]λ6584/Hα are the most strongly impacted by resolution loss in this order. The SMC shows significant deviations even from intermediate scales (~42 pc), whereas for the LMC, the coarsest resolution (~272 pc) remains relatively stable, indicating that the SMC is intrinsically more affected by spatial mixing. Resolution degradation produces a marked homogenization effect: extreme values present at the finest scales are progressively diluted, causing diagnostic diagrams to converge toward their mean loci. Diffuse ionized gas is particularly sensitive to this mixing, while Hα-selected ionized regions exhibit more robust behavior across resolutions. The sensitivity of diagnostic diagrams involving emission-line ratios, equivalent widths, and kinematic properties varies with both spatial resolution and galaxy, with the SMC generally showing stronger changes than the LMC. Our results demonstrate that sub-50 pc resolution is required to resolve the detailed structure of low-metallicity galaxies, and they highlight at least the need for careful interpretation of line-ratio diagnostics in extragalactic studies where coarse spatial resolution is unavoidable.
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Authors A. Z. Lugo-Aranda, Lesly C. Castañeda, Hector Javier Ibarra-Medel, C. Román-Zúñiga, J. Eduardo Méndez-Delgado, Sebastián F. Sánchez, Rodolfo de J. Zermeño, Mónica A. Villa-Durango, I. Cruz-González, Aida Wofford, Oskar Aranguré, G. A. Blanc, Priyanka Chakraborty, E. S. Egorova, Oleg V. Egorov, Thomas Hilder, Evelyn J. Johnston, Amy M. Jones, P. Jiménez-Hernández, K. Kreckel, A. Mejía-Narváez, C. Morisset, Rogelio Orozco-Duarte, Alexandre Roman-Lopes, José G. Fernández-Trincado
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Journal monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/mnras/stag2145
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag2145
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