Galaxy-Scale Clouds of Ionized Gas around AGN

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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Galaxies: Active, Galaxies: Ism, Galaxies: Individual: Ic 2497, Galaxies: Star Formation

Scientific paper

The serendipitous 2007 discovery of the object now known (even by NED) as "Hanny's Voorwerp" (Lintott et al. 2009) set into motion a search for more examples of galaxy-scale clouds of highly-ionized gas in the vicinity of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Using a sample assembled primarily by 'citizen scientists' via a dedicated thread in the Galaxy Zoo Forum, we carried out the first part of a larger long- slit spectroscopic survey of such objects with the 2.1m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO). Of the 30 objects targeted during seven nights (multiple exposures for several), extended emission clouds were observed in 15 objects, with [OIII]λ5007 emission occasionally extending >30 kpc from galaxy cores. A strong majority (11/15) of the extended emission clouds coincide with merging or otherwise violently disrupted systems, but more relevant to our search were the handful of clouds coinciding with isolated, symmetric galaxies lacking an obvious excitation mechanism. We present the results of part one in the hunt for Voorwerp analogues, much of which served to weed-out the more interesting objects to be targeted for future, multi-wavelength studies.

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