Charting the Ages of Starbursts

We review the ages of starbursts and the methods used to obtain this information. We emphasize that the measurement of this parameter is non‐trivial because of observational biases and the complex time‐dependent behavior of a starburst. Star clusters probably provide the best estimates of starburst ages which are then in the range 10–100 Myr, although the short lifetimes of some clusters must introduce a bias against longer lived events. From studies of stellar populations in nearby dwarf galaxies, the burst frequency is found to be ∼ 15%. Stellar population synthesis modeling of unresolved galaxies provides starburst ages of a few Myr up to 100 Myr, consistent with ages derived using star clusters. Overall, the likely duration of a starburst event of ⩽ 100 Myr suggests that they evolve on a time scale which is consistent with the internal dynamical time scale of a galaxy.