2024/03/15 by A. V. Smith Castelli, A. Cortesi, Castelli, A. V. Smith +83
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #Particle Accelerators and Free-Electron Lasers #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2403.10697
openalex publication_date 2024/03/15 · openalex created_date 2024/03/20 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Fornax galaxy cluster is the richest nearby (D ~ 20 Mpc) galaxy association in the southern sky. As such, it provides a wealth of oportunities to elucidate on the processes where environment holds a key role in transforming galaxies. Although it has been the focus of many studies, Fornax has never been explored with contiguous homogeneous wide-field imaging in 12 photometric narrow- and broad-bands like those provided by the Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS). In this paper we present the S-PLUS Fornax Project (S+FP) that aims to comprehensively analyse the galaxy content of the Fornax cluster using S-PLUS. Our data set consists of 106 S-PLUS wide-field frames (FoV ~ 1.4 x 1.4 deg2) observed in five SDSS-like ugriz broad-bands and seven narrow-bands covering specific spectroscopic features like [OII], CaII H+K, Hδ, G-band, Mg b triplet, Hα, and the CaII triplet. Based on S-PLUS specific automated photometry, aimed at correctly detecting Fornax galaxies and globular clusters in S-PLUS images, our dataset provides the community with catalogues containing homogeneous 12-band photometry for ~ 3 x 106 resolved and unresolved objects within a region extending over ~ 208 deg2 (~ 5 Rvir in RA) around Fornax' central galaxy, NGC 1399. We further explore the EAGLE and IllustrisTNG cosmological simulations to identify 45 Fornax-like clusters and generate mock images on all 12 S-PLUS bands of these structures down to galaxies with M⋆ ≥ 108 M\odot. The S+FP dataset we put forward in this first paper of a series will enable a variety of studies some of which are briefly presented.