2010/09/16 by Catherine L. Farage, C. L. Farage, Peter J. McGregor +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Brightest cluster galaxy #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy cluster #Physics #Ram pressure #Star formation #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/724/1/267
19 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal
arxiv created 2010/09/16 · openalex publication_date 2010/11/01 · arxiv updated 2010/11/08 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We present deep optical integral-field spectroscopic observations of the nearby ( z ∼ 0.01) brightest cluster galaxy NGC 4696 in the core of the Centaurus Cluster, made with the Wide Field Spectrograph on the Australian National University 2.3 m telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. We investigate the morphology, kinematics, and excitation of the emission-line filaments and discuss these in the context of a model of a minor merger. We suggest that the emission-line filaments in this object have their origin in the accretion of a gas-rich galaxy and that they are excited by v ∼ 100–200 km s −1 shocks driven into the cool filament gas by the ram pressure of the transonic passage of the merging system through the hot halo gas of NGC 4696.