Faint dwarf spheroidals in the Fornax Cluster

2002/12/02 by M. Hilker, Michael Hilker, Steffen Mieske +2 · 8 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20021766

published as Astron.Astrophys. 397 (2003) L9-L12 · 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics (Letters)

arxiv created 2002/12/02 · openalex publication_date 2003/01/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2022/10/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

We have discovered 70 very faint dwarf galaxies in the Fornax Cluster. These dSphs candidates follow the same magnitude-surface brightness relation as their counterparts in the Local Group, and even extend it to fainter limits. The faintest dSph candidate in our sample has an absolute magnitude of mag and a central surface brightness of mag/arcsec2. There exists a tight color-magnitude relation for the early-type galaxies in Fornax that extends from the giant to the dwarf regime. The faint-end slope of the luminosity function of the early-type dwarfs is flat (), contrary to the results obtained by Kambas et al. (2000).

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