Gas, dust, and young stars in the outer disk of M31

Using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, we have obtained deep high-resolution CCD images in V and I of a 28' x 28' field in the outer disk of M31 at approximate to 116' from the center along the major axis to the southwest and covering a range of projected galactocentric distance from about 23 to 33 kpc. The field was chosen to correspond with extended H I features recorded near the H I edge of the galaxy. The many tens of thousands of objects detected in this large field have been classified using an automatic algorithm that distinguishes unresolved from resolved structures and provides photometry on them. For the most part the unresolved objects are stars in M31. The V-I colors of these stars are highly correlated with the column density of H I in the field. Assuming a Galactic extinction law, this yields a minimum extinction/atomic gas ratio about one-third of that in the solar neighborhood. The interstellar medium (ISM) in this outer disk of M31 therefore contains substantial amounts of dust. We have identified a population of B stars in the field whose distribution is also well correlated with the extended H I distribution. Evidently, star formation is both ongoing and wide spread in the outer disk of M31. According to the current view of the star formation process, molecular gas is therefore also expected to be present. The objects classified as "resolved" turn out to be a mix of background galaxies and overlapping images of foreground stars in M31. The counts and colors of the slightly resolved objects in these ground-based CCD images therefore cannot be used for a reliable determination of the total extinction and reddening by the ISM in M31. However, the larger background galaxies are easily recognizable, and their surface density above a specific magnitude limit is anticorrelated with the H I column density, confirming that a relatively large amount of extinction is closely associated with the H I gas.