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Register a new userDwarf galaxies in the Antlia Cluster: First results
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Added by
Anal\\'ia Smith Castelli
Publication date
2006
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
Authors
A. V. Smith Castelli
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We present the first results of a project aimed to study the galaxy population of the Antlia cluster, the third nearest galaxy cluster after Virgo and Fornax. The observations for the Antlia project consist of Washington wide-field images taken with the MOSAIC camera mounted at the prime focus of the CTIO 4-m Blanco telescope. Our preliminary results correspond to the identification and classification of dwarf galaxies in the central cluster region, extending the list of Ferguson & Sandage (1990). The final aim of our project is to study the luminosity function, morphology and structural parameters of dwarf galaxies in the Antlia cluster with a more complete sample.
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We present preliminary results of the search for Ultra-compact dwarf galaxies in the central region of the Antlia cluster. This new kind of stellar system has brightness, mass and size between those observed in globular clusters and early-type dwarf galaxies, but their origin is not well understood yet.
We present an extension of our previous research on the early-type galaxy population of the Antlia cluster (d ~ 35 Mpc), achieving a total coverage of ~ 2.6 deg x deg and performing surface photometry for ~300 galaxies, 130 of which are new uncatalogued ones. Such new galaxies mainly fall in the low surface brightness (LSB) regime, but there are also some lenticulars (S0) which support the existence of unique functions that connect bright and dwarf galaxies in the scaling relations. We analyse the projected spatial distribution of galaxies up to a distance of ~800 kpc from NGC 3268, the adopted centre, as well as the radial velocity distribution and the correlation between galaxy colour and effective radius with the projected spatial distribution. We also obtain the luminosity function of the early-type galaxies and the distribution of stellar masses using the T1-band magnitudes and adopted mass-luminosity ratios. Additionally, we correlate the central galaxy distribution with an X-ray emission map from the literature. Based on the analysis of the radial velocities and galaxy colour distributions, we find that galaxies redder than the colour-magnitude relation (CMR) have a velocity distribution strongly concentrated towards the values of the dominant galaxies and are homogeneously distributed throughout the cluster. Those bluer than the CMR, in turn, have a much more extended radial velocity distribution and are concentrated towards the centre of the cluster. We also identify 12 candidates to ultra diffuse galaxies (UDG), that seem to be split into two families, and speculate about their origins in the context of the cluster structure.
The present literature does not give a satisfactory answer to the question about the nature of the Antlia galaxy cluster. The radial velocities of galaxies found in the region around the giant ellipticals NGC 3258/3268 range from about 1000 km/s to 4000 km/s. We characterise this region and its possible kinematical and population substructure. We have obtained VLT--VIMOS multi-object spectra of the galaxy population in the inner part of the Antlia cluster and measure radial velocities for 45 potential members. We supplement our galaxy sample with literature data, ending up with 105 galaxy velocities. We find a large radial velocity dispersion for the entire sample as reported in previous papers. However, we find three groups at about 1900 km/s, 2800 km/s, and 3700 km/s, which we interpret as differences in the recession velocities rather than peculiar velocities. The high radial velocity dispersion of galaxies in the Antlia region reflects a considerable extension along the line of sight.
In the light of the question whether most early-type dwarf (dE) galaxies in clusters formed through infall and transformation of late-type progenitors, we search for an imprint of such an infall history in the oldest, most centrally concentrated dE subclass of the Virgo cluster: the nucleated dEs that show no signatures of disks or central residual star formation. We select dEs in a (projected) region around the central elliptical galaxies, and subdivide them by their line-of-sight velocity into fast-moving and slow-moving ones. These subsamples turn out to have significantly different shapes: while the fast dEs are relatively flat objects, the slow dEs are nearly round. Likewise, when subdividing the central dEs by their projected axial ratio into flat and round ones, their distributions of line-of-sight velocities differ significantly: the flat dEs have a broad, possibly two-peaked distribution, whereas the round dEs show a narrow single peak. We conclude that the round dEs probably are on circularized orbits, while the flat dEs are still on more eccentric or radial orbits typical for an infalling population. In this picture, the round dEs would have resided in the cluster already for a long time, or would even be a cluster-born species, explaining their nearly circular orbits. They would thus be the first generation of Virgo cluster dEs. Their shape could be caused by dynamical heating through repeated tidal interactions. Further investigations through stellar population measurements and studies of simulated galaxy clusters would be desirable to obtain definite conclusions on their origin.
We present a study of the smallest and faintest galaxies found in a very deep photographic R band survey of two regions of the Virgo Cluster, totalling 3.2 square degrees, made with the UK Schmidt Telescope. The objects we detect have the same physical sizes and surface brightnesses as Local Group dwarf spheroidal galaxies. The luminosity function of these extremely low luminosity galaxies (down to M_R =~ -11 or about 5 X 10^{-5} L*) is very steep, with a power law slope alpha = -2.2.
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