English

Two formation paths for cluster dwarf galaxies?

Astrophysics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

A surprising result of our recent spectroscopic survey of galaxies in the Coma cluster has been the discovery of a possible bimodal distribution in the metallicities of faint galaxies at MB>17M_B>-17. We identified a group of dwarfs with luminosity-weighted metallicities around solar and a group with [M/H] around -1.5. A metallicity bimodality among galaxies of similar luminosities is unexpected and suggests that faint cluster galaxies could be an heterogeneous population that formed through more than one evolutionary path, possibly as a consequence of the cluster environment.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0310404,
  title  = {Two formation paths for cluster dwarf galaxies?},
  author = {Bianca M. Poggianti and Nobunari Kashikawa and Terry Bridges and Bahram Mobasher and Yutaka Komiyama and Dave Carter and Sadanori Okamura and Masafumi Yagi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0310404},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

2 pages, to appear in IAU Symp. Series vol.217, Recycling intergalactic and interstellar matter, eds. P.-A. Duc, J. Braine, E. Brinks