Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21733511p&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #335.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Fossil groups are thought to be the remnants of groups of galaxies in which all the component galaxies have merged. Left behind is one, large, elliptical galaxy (sometimes surrounded by faint remnants of the group), which has a mass and X-ray luminosity comparable to an entire group of galaxies. It is thought that these objects are the end state of evolution for a galaxy group and have not undergone a major merger in the past 1 Gyr. This makes them ideal for studying characteristics intrinsic to the group environment. We studied a sample of seven candidate fossil groups, selected from Santos et al. 2007, using the SparsePak Integral Field Unit and Bench Spectrograph on the WIYN 3.5m telescope (Kitt Peak, AZ). Here, we present the results of our spectroscopic survey. We correlated our data with multi-wavelength observations of these galaxies, including the Hess et al. (2010) radio continuum observations, and found evidence of AGN activity. To better understand if the AGN is correlated with the star formation history of the fossil group, we used our spectroscopic data and data from SDSS to investigate the stellar populations of the central elliptical galaxies. Fitting these data with a stellar population synthesis model, we find that the star formation history of these galaxies is broadly consistent with the theory that these galaxy groups formed through minor mergers.
This research was supported by the NSF/REU grant AST-1004881 and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Alexander Karabegov
Pequette Naomi
Wilcots Eric M.
No associations
LandOfFree
Stellar Populations of Fossil Group Galaxies does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Stellar Populations of Fossil Group Galaxies, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Stellar Populations of Fossil Group Galaxies will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1401941