Virgo Galaxies with Long One-sided H I Tails

By A. Chung, J. V. van Gorkom, J. Kenney, B. Vollmer. 2007

272 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In a new H I imaging survey of Virgo galaxies (VIVA: VLA Imaging of Virgo galaxies in Atomic gas), we find seven spiral galaxies with long H I tails. The morphology varies, but all the tails are extended well beyond the optical radii on one side. These galaxies are found in intermediate- to low-density regions (0.6-1 Mpc in projection from M87). The tails are all pointing roughly away from M87, suggesting that these tails may have been created by a global cluster mechanism. While the tidal effects of the cluster potential are too small, a rough estimate suggests that simple ram pressure stripping could have indeed formed the tails in all but two cases. At least three systems show H I truncation to within the stellar disk, providing evidence of a gas-gas interaction. Although most of these galaxies do not appear disturbed optically, some have close neighbors, suggesting that tidal interactions may have moved gas outward, making it more susceptible to the intracluster medium ram pressure or viscosity. Indeed, a simulation study of one of the tail galaxies, NGC 4654, suggests that the galaxy is most likely affected by the combined effect of a gravitational interaction and ram pressure stripping. We conclude that these one-sided H I tail galaxies have recently arrived in the cluster, falling in on highly radial orbits. It appears that galaxies begin to lose their gas already at intermediate distances from the cluster center through ram pressure or turbulent viscous stripping and tidal interactions with their neighbors, or a combination of both.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/260dcc4bb80127dfba671e5cc449cc939a8210ec

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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In Instrumentation

1. M. Cappellari
2. C. Conroy
3. P. Hopkins
4. T. Naab
5. L. Hernquist
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7. F. V. D. Bosch
8. R. Dav'e

Citations in the corpus

• MUSE sneaks a peek at extreme ram-pressure stripping events - I. A kinematic study of the archetypal galaxy ESO137-001 (2014, background): “More c© xxxx RAS significantly, these gas-deficient galaxies, and particularly those residing near the cluster cores, often exhibit truncated and disturbed gas disks (e.g. Vollmer et al. 2008; Chung et al. 2009) or, in some cases, one-sidedH I tails (e.g. Chung et al. 2007).”
• A Wide-Field Survey of Two z ~ 0.5 Galaxy Clusters: Identifying the Physical Processes Responsible for the Observed Transformation of Spirals into S0s (2007, background): “…clusters could, for example, explain why some clusters, like Coma, reveal few signs of evolution in their massive galaxies (Poggianti et al. 2004), while others, like Virgo, have a rich population of passive spirals and galaxies with other signsof recent evolution (e.g., Chung et al. 2007).”
• Ultraviolet tails and trails in cluster galaxies: a sample of candidate gaseous stripping events in Coma (2010, methodology): “The HI tails are all pointing away from the centre of Virgo.”
• Physical properties and environments of nearby galaxies (2009, background): “…in galaxies is being affected by the cluster environment, likely by ram pressure stripping or related processes (Gunn & Gott 1972) — often seen in the process of happening, e.g. by Chung et al. (2007) — and at least in some cases is resulting in the stripping of atomic gas from the outside in.”
• VLA IMAGING OF VIRGO SPIRALS IN ATOMIC GAS (VIVA). I. THE ATLAS AND THE H i PROPERTIES (2009, background): “The H i is mildly truncated to within the optical disk to the south, while a long tail is present in the opposite side (Figure 12; see also Chung et al. 2007).”
• The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey - VIII. Final data release. The effect of group environment on the gas content of massive galaxies (2013, methodology): “…been successfully used to demonstrate that galaxies in the densest environments have their Hi gas content largely reduced, most likely by ram pressure stripping by the dense intracluster medium (Giovanelli & Haynes 1985; Solanes et al. 2001; Chung et al. 2007; Vollmer 2009; Cortese et al. 2011).”
• X-ray spectroscopy of the Virgo Cluster out to the virial radius (2011, background): “However, H i imaging surveys have revealed several galaxies falling into the Virgo Cluster that display long H i tails at projected radii of 0.6–1.2 Mpc from the center of the cluster (e.g. Kenney et al. 2004; Chung et al. 2007; Kantharia et al. 2008).”
• Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – II. The effect of environment on interactions (2010, result): “For example, Chung et al. (2007) found that 6/7 of the late-type Virgo cluster galaxies in their sample which exhibit long HI gas tails also had a close companion within 100 kpc and 100 km s−1.”
• The ATLAS3D project - VII. A new look at the morphology of nearby galaxies: the kinematic morphology-density relation (2011, result): “The importance of the IGM near the cluster core (R < 0.5 Mpc) is also evident in the studies of Chung et al. (2007, 2009), who find only truncated and displaced H I disks in spirals in that region, while more extended and regular disks reside further out.”
• The correlation of star formation quenching with internal galaxy properties and environment (2008, background): “Also, cold gas can be stripped out of the galaxy by tidal forces due to the background dark matter dominated potential of the cluster as well as ram pressure stripping by the intracluster medium (Gunn & Gott 1972; Abadi, Moore & Bower 1999; Quilis, Moore & Bower 2000; Chung et al. 2007).”
• A REVISED PARALLEL-SEQUENCE MORPHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF GALAXIES: STRUCTURE AND FORMATION OF S0 AND SPHEROIDAL GALAXIES (2011, background): “Figure 24 shows some of the best evidence for ongoing ram-pressure stripping in the Virgo cluster (adapted from Chung et al. 2007; Kenney et al. 2004, 2008).”
• BUDHIES II: a phase-space view of H i gas stripping and star formation quenching in cluster galaxies (2015, background): “Observations (e.g. Cayatte et al. 1990; Bravo-Alfaro et al. 2000, 2001; Poggianti & van Gorkom 2001; Kenney et al. 2004; Crowl et al. 2005; Chung et al. 2007, 2009; Abramson et al. 2011; Scott et al. 2010, 2012; Gavazzi et al. 2013) have shown that the HI gas in galaxies is indeed disturbed and…”
• LoCuSS: THE SLOW QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION IN CLUSTER GALAXIES AND THE NEED FOR PRE-PROCESSING (2015, background): “…within r r500 200∼ − are sufficient to strip half their gas contents on 500–1000Myr timescales (Roediger & Hensler 2005), while observations confirm that ram pressure stripping is effective at removing gas and quenching star formation as far out as r500 (Chung et al. 2007; Merluzzi et al. 2013).”