2nd of June 2015 |
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Blasting away a dwarf galaxy: The "tail" of ESO 324-G024 |
by Megan Johnson (CASS) |
We present a detailed study of the dwarf
irregular galaxy ESO 324-G024 - colored green and
seen in projection against the northern lobe of the radio galaxy Centaurus A
(Cen A, NGC 5128). ESO 324-G024 lies only ~104 kpc from the center of NGC 5128,
which is a giant elliptical galaxy and host to the radio source known as Cen A.
We find that ESO 324-G024 has a peculiar neutral hydrogen (HI) morphology with
a tail extending 2.5 kpc beyond its disk. Our data indicates that ESO 324-G024
may have passed through the northern radio lobe of Cen A and experienced ram
pressure forces, which are the dominant mechanism for creating its tail. In this figure we see the giant radio lobes of Cen A - as mapped by HIPASS (Calabretta et al. 2014) - together with the factor 10 enlarged HI intensity maps of the Cen A Group members from the Local Volume HI Survey (LVHIS). The colors indicate if a group member is in front of, behind or at the same distance as Cen A. Reference: Johnson, Kamphuis, Koribalski, Wang, Oh, Hill, O'Sullivan, Haan, Serra 2015 (arXiv:1505.07554) |