Spectroscopic studies of low-luminosity early-type galaxies are essential to understand their origin and evolution but remain challenging because of low surface brightness levels. We describe an observational campaign with the new high-throughput Binospec spectrograph at the 6.5-m MMT. It targets a representative sample of dwarf elliptical (dE), ultra-diffuse (UDG), and dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies. We outline our data analysis approach that features (i) a full spectrophotometric fitting to derive internal kinematics and star formation histories of galaxies; (ii) two-dimensional light profile decomposition; (iii) Jeans anisotropic modelling to assess their internal dynamics and dark matter content. We present first results for 9 UDGs in the Coma cluster and a nearby dSph galaxy, which suggest that a combination of internal (supernovae feedback) and environmental (ram-pressure stripping, interactions) processes can explain observed properties of UDGs and, therefore, establish an evolutionary link between UDGs, dSph, and dE galaxies.
@article{arxiv.1910.04188,
title = {Evolutionary link between ultra-diffuse galaxies and dwarf early-type galaxies},
author = {Igor V. Chilingarian and Kirill A. Grishin and Anton V. Afanasiev and Daniel Fabricant and Sean Moran},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.04188},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Conference proceeding for the IAU Symposium 355 "The Realm of the Low Surface Brightness Universe" held in Tenerife, Spain, July 8-12, 2019