The morphology and kinematics of the luminous blue starburst galaxy NGC 7673 are explored using the WIYN 3.5m telescope .
Signs of a past kinematic disturbance are detected in the outer galaxy ; the most notable feature is a luminous ripple located 1.55 arc minutes from the center of NGC 7673 .
Sub-arc second imaging in B and R filters also reveals red dust lanes and blue star clusters that delineate spiral arms in the bright inner disk and narrow band H \alpha imaging shows that the luminous star clusters are associated with giant H II regions .
The H \alpha kinematics measured with echelle imaging spectroscopy using the WIYN DensePak fiber array imply that these H II regions are confined to a smoothly rotating disk .
The velocity dispersion in ionized gas in the disk is \sigma \sim 24 km s ^ { -1 } , which sets an upper bound on the dispersion of young stellar populations.. Broad emission components with \sigma \sim 63 km s ^ { -1 } found in some regions are likely produced by mechanical power supplied by massive , young stars ; a violent starburst is occurring in a kinematically calm disk .
Although the asymmetric outer features point to a merger or interaction as the starburst trigger , the inner disk structure constrains the strength of the event to the scale of a minor merger or weak interaction that occurred at least an outer disk dynamical time scale in the past .