Obtaining the Kinematics of Virgo's Intracluster Stars

Computer Science

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Scientific paper

The study of intracluster starlight, once found only in distant rich galaxy clusters through surface brightness measurements, has been revolutionized by the ground-based discovery of intracluster planetary nebulae (IPN) in the Virgo and Fornax Clusters, and by the detection of Virgo's intracluster red giants by the Hubble Space Telescope. However, virtually nothing is known about the kinematics of these stars. Intracluster red giants are too faint to observe spectroscopically, and to date, only three IPN have had their velocities (serendipitously) measured. This is extremely unfortunate, because different models of intracluster star formation predict very different observed velocity distributions. To remedy this lack of data, we propose to measure the radial velocities of IPN from our ground-based survey of the Virgo Cluster by using the Hydra multi-object spectrograph on the WIYN telescope. From these data, we can place limits on the origin time of intracluster stars in the Virgo Cluster, and search for coherent streams of intracluster stars, which are predicted by some models of intracluster starlight. Finally, we will also probe the complex structure of the Virgo Cluster core, and test dynamical models of its nature.

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