The History of Star Formation in the Barred Galaxy NGC 7020

NGC 7020 is one of the few barred galaxies that present a hexagonal ring central structure, with ansae at its extremes, pointing to the existence of well populated hexagon-like regular orbits surprisingly centered with the galaxy nucleus. The hexagon circumscribes a bunch of young clusters that present Hα emission. Outwards, at the border of the disk, appears a circular ring, which is also populated by Hα emitting young clusters. In order to study the young stellar population traced by their HII regions, we imaged NGC 7020 with narrow band Hα and nearby continuum filters with GEMINI-S+GMOS-S. SEXTRACTOR was used to find more than two hundred Hα emmiting condensations. We determined Hα fluxes and the equivalent width of Hα in emission (W Hα), which allows to model the HII regions ages with Starburst99. We determined that the external ring is populated with regions younger than 8 Myr, while the regions located inside the central hexagonal ring are sistematically older. The disk at intermediate scales does not present HII regions. The ansae of the hexagonal ring does not present Hα emission. We discuss the possible connection between the internal and the external cicles of young cluster formation.