On the Nature of the NGC 1275 System

By Christopher J. Conselice, J. Gallagher III, R. Wyse. 2001

233 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subarcsecond images, taken in B, R, and Hα filters, and area spectroscopy obtained with the WIYN 3.5 m telescope provide the basis for an investigation of the unusual structures in the stellar body and ionized gas in and around the Perseus Cluster central galaxy NGC 1275. Our Hα filter is tuned to gas at the velocity of NGC 1275, revealing complex, probably unresolved, small-scale features in the extended ionized gas, located up to 50 h kpc from NGC 1275. The mean Hα surface brightness varies little along the outer filaments; this, together with the complex excitation state demonstrated by spectra, imply that the filaments are likely to be tubes, or ribbons, of gas. The morphology, location, and inferred physical parameters of the gas in the filaments are consistent with a model, whereby the filaments form through compression of the intracluster gas by relativistic plasma emitted from the active nucleus of NGC 1275. Imaging spectroscopy with the DensePak fiber array on WIYN suggests partial rotational support of the inner component of low-velocity ionized gas. Our broadband data is used to derive color maps of the stellar distribution and also to investigate asymmetries in the stellar surface brightness. We confirm and extend evidence for features in the stellar body of NGC 1275 and identify outer stellar regions containing very blue, probably very young, star clusters. We interpret these as evidence for recent accretion of a gas-rich system, with subsequent star formation. Other star clusters are identified, some of which are possibly associated with the high-velocity 8200 km s-1 emission-line system being in the same projected location. We suggest that two main processes, which may be causally connected, are responsible for the rich phenomenology of the NGC 1275 system—NGC 1275 experienced a recent merger and/or interaction with a group of gas-rich galaxies, and recent outflows from its AGN have compressed the intracluster gas and perhaps the gas in the infalling galaxies to produce a complex web of filaments.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

Thermal conduction and reduced cooling flows in galaxy clusters (2003, background): “One problem with the last possibility is that the quasi-linear optical filaments seen in the Perseus cluster (Conselice et al. 2001) argue in that case against the gas being strongly turbulent (Fabian et al. 2003c).”
Early and Rapid Merging as a Formation Mechanism of Massive Galaxies: Empirical Constraints (2005, background): “Another related issue is the history of the physical processes that drive galaxy formation, such as mergers, gas cooling or some combination of these (Conselice et al. 2001a).”
Cold molecular gas in the Perseus cluster core - Association with X-ray cavity, Halpha filaments and cooling flow - (2006, methodology): “The Perseus cluster harbors such a huge Hα filamentary nebulosity (Hu et al. 1983; McNamara et al. 1996a; Conselice et al. 2001).”
ON THE ORIGIN OF THE EXTENDED Hα FILAMENTS IN COOLING FLOW CLUSTERS (2010, background): “A great deal of literature has been devoted to the study of these filaments, which are seen in molecular gas (Salomé et al. 2008), warm ionized hydrogen (Conselice et al. 2001), and X-ray (Fabian et al. 2006).”
Collisional heating as the origin of filament emission in galaxy clusters (2008, methodology): “We measured the Hα luminosity in the IRAM beam from the data of (Conselice et al. 2001) as L(Hα) = 5.5 × 1040 erg s−1.”
The relationship between the optical Hα filaments and the X‐ray emission in the core of the Perseus cluster (2003, methodology): “The outflow of the radio source is responsible (Conselice et al 2001).”
A deeper X‐ray study of the core of the Perseus galaxy cluster: the power of sound waves and the distribution of metals and cosmic rays (2007, methodology): “18 we compare the flux from the cooling-flow component cooling down to 0.25 keV (above) against the flux in the continuumsubtracted Hα waveband from the data from Conselice et al. (2001) (using the fluxes given in several regions to calibrate the count to flux scale).”
X-ray spectroscopy of galaxy clusters: studying astrophysical processes in the largest celestial laboratories (2009, unknown): “These maps are shown in comparison to a map of the optical Hα emission (observed by Conselice et al. 2001) in Fig.”