2002/01/28 by John J. Feldmeier, Feldmeier, John J.
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0201452
Invited review to be published in IAU Symposium 209, Planetary Nebulae. 8 pages, 2 figures. Paper is also available at http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/johnf/ipn_proc.ps.gz
arxiv created 2002/01/28 · openalex publication_date 2002/01/28 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We review the progress of research on intracluster planetary nebulae (IPN). In the past five years, hundreds of IPN candidates have been detected in the Virgo and Fornax galaxy clusters and searches are also underway in poorer galaxy groups. From the observations to date, and applying the known properties of extragalactic planetary nebulae, the intracluster light in Virgo and Fornax: 1) is significant, at least 20% of the total cluster stellar luminosity, 2) is elongated in Virgo along our line of sight, and 3) may derive from lower-luminosity galaxies, consistent with some models of intracluster star production. A fraction of IPN candidates are not true IPN, but emission-line sources of very large observed equivalent width (> 200 A). The most likely source for these contaminating objects are Lyman-alpha galaxies at z ~ 3.1. Follow-up spectroscopy of the IPN candidates will be crucial to discriminate against high redshift galaxies and to derive the velocity field of the intracluster stellar population.