Malin 1, being a class of giant low surface galaxies, continues to surprise us even today. The HST/F814W observation has shown that the central region of Malin 1 is more like a normal SB0/a galaxy, while the rest of the disk has the characteristic of a low surface brightness system. The AstroSat/UVIT observations suggest scattered recent star formation activity all over the disk, especially along the spiral arms. The central 9" (∼14 kpc) region, similar to the size of the Milky Way's stellar disk, has a number of far-UV clumps - indicating recent star-formation activity. The high resolution UVIT/F154W image reveals far-UV emission within the bar region (∼4 kpc) - suggesting the presence of hot, young stars in the bar. These young stars from the bar region are perhaps responsible for producing the strong emission lines such as Hα, [OII] seen in the SDSS spectra. Malin 1B, a dwarf early-type galaxy, is interacting with the central region and probably responsible for inducing the recent star-formation activity in this galaxy.
@article{arxiv.2101.07002,
title = {The central region of the enigmatic Malin 1},
author = {Kanak Saha and Suraj Dhiwar and Sudhanshu Barway and Chaitra Narayan and Shyam N. Tandon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.07002},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
15 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in the Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy