Does a Galaxy Fly?
Astrophysics
2015-06-24 v1
Abstract
Disk galaxies in a cluster of galaxies are moving in hot gas filling the cluster. Generally, they are moving at transonic or supersonic velocities. If ram-pressure stripping is insufficient to destroy the gas disk, the galaxies should be affected by the wind of the surrounding hot gas similar to an airfoil. In this paper, I consider whether the aerodynamic interaction can be strong enough to force a disk galaxy to deviate from the orbit that it would have been in. I find that while the lift force is not effective, the drag force could affect face-on disk galaxies in poor clusters on long timescales.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0608350,
title = {Does a Galaxy Fly?},
author = {Yutaka Fujita},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0608350},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in PASJ