Nuclear structure & merger-starburst relation in the ultraluminous IRAS galaxy NGC 6240

Details Nuclear structure & merger-starburst relation in the ultraluminous IRAS galaxy NGC 6240 Nuclear structure & merger-starburst relation in the ultraluminous IRAS galaxy NGC 6240

Jul 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996hst..prop.6430v&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #6430

Computer Science

Hst Proposal Id #6430 Galaxies &Amp, Clusters

Scientific paper

The ultraluminous IRAS galaxy NGC 6240 has been studied extensively from the ground at all accessible wavelengths. Loops, tidal tails and a double nucleus {separation approximately 1.5 arcsec = 0.7 kpc} suggest an ongoing merger. The far-IR luminosity is generally attributed to dust-heating by a nuclear starburst. This is supported by most, but not all data. In particular, the nuclear stellar velocity dispersion {approximately 350 kms} indicates too high an M/L for a starburst and the UV field strength appears to be too low. Alternative models for the dust heating, e.g. invoking an AGN, therefore remain viable. Of equal interest has been a claim for the presence of a 10^11 solar mass black hole {BH} at 12 arcsec from the double nucleus, from a decomposition of the ionized gas velocity field into that of two disks, presumed to be the merging progenitors. We will obtain broad- and narrow-band WFPC2 images of NGC 6240 to study the nuclear distributions of stars, dust and ionized gas. We will search for an AGN component. We will construct dissipational {tree+SPH} N-body models, to interpret the data, test the starburst hypothesis, and study whether equilibrium kinematics can be used to infer M/L values and BH masses for a merging galaxy like NGC 6240.

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