English

Candidate tidal dwarf galaxies associated with the Stephan's Quintet

Astrophysics 2009-11-06 v1

Abstract

We present kinematic and photometric evidence for the presence of seven candidate tidal dwarf galaxies in Stephan's quintet. The central regions of the two most probable parent galaxies, N7319 and N7318B, contain little or no gas whereas the intragroup medium, and particularly the optical tails that seem to be associated with N7318B are rich in cold and ionized gas. Two tidal-dwarf candidates may be located at the edge of a tidal tail, one within a tail and for four others there is no obvious stellar/gaseous bridge between them and the parent galaxy. Two of the candidates are associated with HI clouds, one of which is, in addition, associated with a CO cloud. All seven regions have low continuum fluxes and high Hα\alpha luminosity densities (F(Hα\alpha) = 1 -- 60 ×\times 1014^{-14} erg s1^{-1} cm2^{-2}). Their magnitudes (MB=_B = --16.1 to --12.6), sizes (\sim 3.5 h751_{75}^{-1} kpc), colors (typically BR=0.7B-R = 0.7) and gas velocity gradients (\sim 8 -- 26 h75_{75} km s1^{-1} kpc1^{-1}) are typical for tidal dwarf galaxies. In addition the ratios between their star formation rates determined from Hα\alpha and from the B band luminosity are typical of other tidal dwarf galaxies. The masses of the tidal dwarf galaxies in Stephan's quintet range from \sim 2 ×\times 108^8 to 1010^{10} M_\odot and the median value for their inferred mass-to-light ratios is 7 M_\odot/L_\odot.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0101226,
  title  = {Candidate tidal dwarf galaxies associated with the Stephan's Quintet},
  author = {C. Mendes de Oliveira and H. Plana and P. Amram and C. Balkowski and M. Bolte},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0101226},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in Astronomical Journal (23p 11figures)