1997/12/15 by Doerte Mehlert, Mehlert, Doerte, R. P. Saglia +8
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/9712176
13 pages, including 9 eps-figures, Latex, uses l-aa.sty; accepted to be published in A&A Main Journal
arxiv created 1997/12/15 · openalex publication_date 1997/12/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Coma cluster is one of the richest known cluster of galaxies, spanning about 4 dex in density. Hence it is the ideal place to study the structure of galaxies as a function of environmental density in order to constrain the theories of galaxy formation and evolution. For a magnitude limited sample of 35 E and S0 galaxies we obtained long slit spectra to derive the rotation curves, the velocity dispersion profiles and the radial gradients of the Mg, Fe and Hbeta line indices. Here we report on two early -- type galaxies which turned out to host the largest kinematically peculiar cores yet found in ``normal'' early -- type galaxies: NGC 4816 hosts a decoupled counter rotating core with a radial extension along the major axis of 2.7 kpc, while IC 4051 has a co-rotating peculiar core with a sizes of 3.4 kpc. We combine our data with HST photometry and show that both cores are flattened central stellar disks which contribute less than 1 % to the total V band light of the galaxies, but are nevertheless conspicuous (1 - 2 x 10**9 Lsun). The metallicity of the cores is 0.25 dex super solar and drops to solar and sub solar in the outer part of NGC 4816 and IC 4051, respectively. The mean stellar population in both central disks is old (8 - 12 Gyr) and highly overabundant in Mgb relative to (approximatly 0.5 dex). We discuss the evidence that these central disks formed via dissipational major merger events.