NGC 4245: one or two bars, and where does the gas inflow stop?
  We have studied stellar and gaseous kinematics as well as stellar population
properties in the center of the early-type barred galaxy NGC 4245 by means of
integral-field spectroscopy. We have found a chemically distinct compact core,
more metal-rich by a factor of 2.5 than the bulge, and a ring of young stars
with the radius of 300 pc. Current star formation proceeds in this ring; its
location corresponds to the inner Lindblad resonance of the large-scale bar.
The mean age of stars in the chemically distinct core is significantly younger
than the estimate by Sarzi et al. (2005) for the very center, within R=0.25",
made with the HST spectroscopy data. We conclude that the `chemically distinct
core' is in fact an ancient ultra-compact star forming ring with radius less
than 100 pc which marks perhaps the past position of the inner Lindblad
resonance. In general, the pattern of star formation history in the center of
this early-type gas-poor galaxy confirms the predictions of dynamical models
for the secular evolution of a stellar-gaseous disk under the influence of a
bar.
