CO in mergers. II - NGC 7252: The link between mergers and ellipticals

Details CO in mergers. II - NGC 7252: The link between mergers and ellipticals CO in mergers. II - NGC 7252: The link between mergers and ellipticals

Publishing date

Feb 1990

URL

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1990a%26a...228l...5d&link_type=abstract

Journals

Astronomy and Astrophysics (ISSN 0004-6361), vol. 228, no. 1, Feb. 1990, p. L5-L8.

Science

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field

Astrophysics

Additional info 2

44

Additional info 3

Carbon Monoxide, Disk Galaxies, Elliptical Galaxies, Active Galactic Nuclei, Emission Spectra, Quasars, Star Formation

Type

Scientific paper

Abstract

HI, (C-12)O(1-0), and (C-12)O(2-1) observations of the galaxy NGC 7252 are presented. This system formed from the merging of two disk galaxies about 700 Myr ago. It is found that, although it appears as an emerging elliptical galaxy, NGC 7252 still contains a lot of gaseous material, with M(HI) = 3.4 x 10 to the 9th solar masses and M(H2) = 3.6 x 10 to the 9th solar masses (H0 = 75). The molecular mass, in particular, reveals much larger than what is usually found in ellipticals, and what was till now expected to be left in post-starburst merger remnants. While the atomic component is widely spread within the galaxy, the molecular gas is presumably associated with the 2.5 kpc radius disk of ionized gas. More generally, the observations show that, at least in some cases, the strong burst of star formation triggered by the merging of two gas-rich galaxies, that is observed in infrared ultraluminous objects is not efficient enough to exhaust all of the gaseous material. In addition, that NGC 7252 does not show any nuclear activity suggests that a merging does not always lead to the formation of a quasar nor even of a mere active nucleus.

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