Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userGalaxy Orientations in the Coma Cluster
126
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
We have examined the orientations of early-type galaxies in the Coma cluster to see whether the well-established tendency for brightest cluster galaxies to share the same major axis orientation as their host cluster also extends to the rest of the galaxy population. We find no evidence of any preferential orientations of galaxies within Coma or its surroundings. The implications of this result for theories of the formation of clusters and galaxies (particularly the first-ranked members) are discussed.
rate research
Read More
We have then searched for preferential orientations of faint galaxies in the Coma cluster (down I_Vega~-11.5). By applying a deconvolution method to deep u* and I band images of the Coma cluster, we were able to recover orientations down to faint magnitudes. No preferential orientations are found in more than 95% of the cluster, and the brighter the galaxies, the fewer preferential orientations. The minor axes of late type galaxies are radially oriented along a northeast -southwest direction and are oriented north-south in the western X-ray sub- structures. For early type galaxies, in the western regions showing significant preferential orientations, galaxy major axes are oriented perpendicularly to the north-south direction. In the eastern significant region and close to NGC 4889, galaxy major axes also point toward the 2 cluster dominant galaxies. In the southern significant regions, galaxy planes are tangential with respect to the clustercentric direction, except close to (alpha=194.8, delta=27.65) where the orientation is close to -15deg. Part of the orientations of the minor axes of late type galaxies and of the major axes of early type galaxies can be explained by a tidal torque model applied to cosmological filaments and local merging directions. Another part (close to NGC4889) can be accounted for by collimated infalls. For early type galaxies, the (alpha=194.8, delta=27.65) region shows orientations that probably result from processes involving induced star formation.
Spatially-resolved gas pressure maps of the Coma galaxy cluster are obtained from a mosaic of XMM-Newton observations in the scale range between a resolution of 20 kpc and an extent of 2.8 Mpc. A Fourier analysis of the data reveals the presence of a scale-invariant pressure fluctuation spectrum in the range between 40 and 90 kpc and is found to be well described by a projected Kolmogorov/Oboukhov-type turbulence spectrum. Deprojection and integration of the spectrum yields the lower limit of $sim 10$ percent of the total intracluster medium pressure in turbulent form. The results also provide observational constraints on the viscosity of the gas.
As part of the HST/ACS Coma Cluster Treasury Survey, we have undertaken a Keck/LRIS spectroscopic campaign to determine membership for faint dwarf galaxies. In the process, we discovered a population of Ultra Compact Dwarf galaxies (UCDs) in the core region of the Coma cluster. At the distance of Coma, UCDs are expected to have angular sizes 0.01 < R_e < 0.2 arcsec. With ACS imaging, we can resolve all but the smallest ones with careful fitting. Candidate UCDs were chosen based on magnitude, color, and degree of resolution. We spectroscopically confirm 27 objects as bona fide UCD members of the Coma cluster, a 60% success rate for objects targeted with M_R < -12. We attribute the high success rate in part to the high resolution of HST data and to an apparent large population of UCDs in Coma. We find that the UCDs tend to be strongly clustered around giant galaxies, at least in the core region of the cluster, and have a distribution and colors that are similar to globular clusters. These findings suggest that UCDs are not independent galaxies, but rather have a star cluster origin. This current study provides the dense environment datapoint necessary for understanding the UCD population.
The HST ACS Coma Cluster Treasury Survey is a deep two passband imaging survey of the nearest very rich cluster of galaxies, covering a range of galaxy density environments. The imaging is complemented by a recent wide field redshift survey of the cluster conducted with Hectospec on the 6.5m MMT. Among the many scientific applications for this data are the search for compact galaxies. In this paper, we present the discovery of seven compact (but quite luminous) stellar systems, ranging from M32-like galaxies down to ultra-compact dwarfs (UCDs)/dwarf to globular transition objects (DGTOs). We find that all seven compact galaxies require a two-component fit to their light profile and have measured velocity dispersions that exceed those expected for typical early-type galaxies at their luminosity. From our structural parameter analysis we conclude that three of the sample should be classified as compact ellipticals or M32-like galaxies, the remaining four being less extreme systems. The three compact ellipticals are all found to have old luminosity weighted ages (> 12 Gyr), intermediate metallicities (-0.6 < [Fe/H] < -0.1) and high [Mg/Fe] (> 0.25). Our findings support a tidal stripping scenario as the formation mode of compact galaxies covering the luminosity range studied here. We speculate that at least two early-type morphologies may serve as the progenitor of compact galaxies in clusters.
Intracluster stellar populations are a natural result of tidal interactions in galaxy clusters. Measuring these populations is difficult, but important for understanding the assembly of the most massive galaxies. The Coma cluster is one of the nearest truly massive galaxy clusters, and is host to a correspondingly large system of globular clusters (GCs). We use imaging from the HST/ACS Coma Cluster Survey to present the first definitive detection of a large population of intracluster GCs (IGCs) that fills the Coma cluster core and is not associated with individual galaxies. The GC surface density profile around the central massive elliptical galaxy, NGC 4874, is dominated at large radii by a population of IGCs that extend to the limit of our data (R<520 kpc). We estimate that there are 47000+/-1600 (random) +4000/-5000 (systematic) IGCs out to this radius, and that they make up ~70% of the central GC system, making this the largest GC system in the nearby Universe. Even including the GC systems of other cluster galaxies, IGCs still make up ~30-45% of the GCs in the cluster core. Observational limits from previous studies of the intracluster light (ICL) suggest that the IGC population has a high specific frequency. If the IGC population has a specific frequency similar to high-S_N dwarf galaxies, then the ICL has a total stellar mass of ~10^12 M_sun within the cluster core. The ICL makes up approximately half of the stellar luminosity and one-third of the stellar mass of the central (NGC4874+ICL) system. The color distribution of the IGC population is bimodal, with blue, metal-poor GCs outnumbering red, metal-rich GCs by a ratio of 4:1. The fraction of red IGCs (20%), and the red color of those GCs, implies that IGCs can originate from the halos of relatively massive, L* galaxies, and not solely from the disruption of dwarf galaxies. (Abridged)
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
