The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society (천문학회보)
- Volume 41 Issue 2
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- Pages.34.3-35
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- 2016
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- 1226-2692(pISSN)
Ram Pressure Stripping of an elliptical galaxy in Abell 2670
- Sheen, Yun-Kyeong (Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute) ;
- Smith, Rory (Yonsei University) ;
- Jaffe, Yara (ESO) ;
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Kim, Minjin
(Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute) ;
- Yi, Sukyoung (Yonsei University)
- Published : 2016.10.12
Abstract
Ram pressure stripping of early-type galaxies has been largely neglected until now because of their gas poor nature. MUSE IFU observation vividly reveal the presence of star-forming blobs and ionised gas tails, around an early-type galaxy in Abell 2670. The galaxy was identified as a post-merger galaxy with disturbed faint features, in MOSAIC 2 deep optical images. The imaging also revealed a series of star-forming blobs, situated in the direction facing away from the cluster centre. Thanks to the revolutionary wide field-of-view of the MUSE, combined with 8.2-m VLT (UT-4) at Cerro Paranal, we could simultaneously obtain IFU spectra of the blobs, as well as the galaxy. The MUSE spectra clearly confirms that the star-forming blobs are associated with the early-type galaxy. Moreover, MUSE reveals long ionised-gas tails, emanating from the galaxy. The quantity of gas indicates a gas rich progenitor has merged with the early-type galaxy. However the direction of the tails and blobs, and the blob morphology, appears to indicate that strong ram-pressure stripping may have stripped out gas brought in by the merger. We will present kinematic structure of the whole system (the galaxy, star-forming blobs, and gas tails), as well as the star formation history of the system, supporting a scenario where a recent galaxy merger is subjected to cluster environmental mechanisms.
Keywords