Introduction

A vital part of understanding the evolution of distant galaxies is the detailed study of star formation in nearby galaxies. Simple gravitational instability models are able to explain the large-scale distribution and variation in rate of star formation within the disks of nearby spirals (Kennicutt 1989). However this model applies only to scales >1 kpc, and there are some notable exceptions to the rule (e.g. M33, Kennicutt 1989), where the total gas surface density is everywhere below the critical value predicted from the rotation curve, but rapid star formation is occuring. Other processes, operating on smaller scales, may also be important in creating new regions of star formation. In particular, sweeping of gas by wind- and supernova-driven supershells has often been proposed as a means of continuing star formation in galaxies (e.g. Tenorio-Tagle & Bodenheimer 1988). This process may dominate in the extreme late-type galaxies and dwarfs, making them useful laboratories for studying it, relatively undisturbed by large-scale dynamical effects.

NGC 4214 is a magellanic spiral or irregular in the Canes Venatici I group, at a distance of  Mpc. I observed the galaxy with the B, C and D configurations of the Very Large Array (VLA) in 1993 and 1994, in order to study the supershell population and detailed kinematics of the neutral gas. A full account of the reduction and analysis will be presented elsewhere; in this paper I show some initial results on the overall HI distribution and velocity field.

© Copyright Astronomical Society of Australia 1997