The Cores of Elliptical Galaxies in Coma

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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Hst Proposal Id #5997 Galaxies &Amp, Clusters

Scientific paper

The cores of galaxies are astrophysically unique. They canhost high energy nuclei, star formation and perhaps even blackholes. HST observations have established that the cores ofellipticals are related to their global properties, and so canbe used as diagnostics of the physical processes occurring atthe time of formation. HST images of galaxy cores havedistinguished two different types of core luminosity profiles:`soft' and `hard' types. It is suggested that luminous, slowlyrotating galaxies have `soft' cores and the less luminousdisky galaxies have `hard' cores. This can be interpreted interms of a formation scenario based on a merger hierarchy inwhich the low luminosity systems experience highly dissipativemergers, but as the luminous systems are assembled the mergersbecome increasingly stellar. In this picture, the type of corea galaxy generates is intimately related to its evolutionaryhistory, i.e. the degree of interaction/merging experiencedand the availability of cold gas. In turn, this should notonly depend on luminosity but also on the galaxy's localenvironment. Here we propose to test the gaseous/stellarmerger picture by imaging a set of Coma cluster ellipticalsfrom a wide range of cluster radii. In the gas poorenvironment of the cluster core there may be insufficent coldgas for the low luminosity galaxies to form `hard' cores.Similarly, at the cluster turnround radius even luminousgalaxies may have experienced a dissipative core formation andpossess

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