Detection of a Hot Gaseous Halo Around the Giant Spiral Galaxy NGC 1961

Details Detection of a Hot Gaseous Halo Around the Giant Spiral Galaxy NGC 1961 Detection of a Hot Gaseous Halo Around the Giant Spiral Galaxy NGC 1961

2011-05-23

arxiv.org/abs/1105.4614v2

ApJ 2011, 737, 22

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

26 pages, 5 figures, accepted to ApJ. Updated to include journal ref and small changes added in proofs

Scientific paper

Hot gaseous halos are predicted around all large galaxies and are critically important for our understanding of galaxy formation, but they have never been detected at distances beyond a few kpc around a spiral galaxy. We used the Chandra ACIS-I instrument to search for diffuse X-ray emission around an ideal candidate galaxy: the isolated giant spiral NGC 1961. We observed four quadrants around the galaxy for 30 ks each, carefully subtracting background and point source emission, and found diffuse emission that appears to extend to 40-50 kpc. We fit $\beta$-models to the emission, and estimate a hot halo mass within 50 kpc of $5\times10^9 M_{\odot}$. When this profile is extrapolated to 500 kpc (the approximate virial radius), the implied hot halo mass is $1-3\times10^{11} M_{\odot}$. These mass estimates assume a gas metallicity of $Z = 0.5 Z_{\odot}$. This galaxy's hot halo is a large reservoir of gas, but falls significantly below observational upper limits set by pervious searches, and suggests that NGC 1961 is missing 75% of its baryons relative to the cosmic mean, which would tentatively place it below an extrapolation of the baryon Tully-Fisher relationship of less massive galaxies. The cooling rate of the gas is no more than 0.4 $M_{\odot}$/year, more than an order of magnitude below the gas consumption rate through star formation. We discuss the implications of this halo for galaxy formation models.

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