The Next Generation Fornax Survey (NGFS). II. The Central Dwarf Galaxy Population

2018/01/08 by Paul Eigenthaler, Thomas H. Puzia, Matthew A. Taylor +34 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Brightest cluster galaxy #Dwarf galaxy #Elliptical galaxy #Fornax Cluster #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Physics #Population #Star formation #Stellar mass #Stellar population #Surface brightness #Virgo Cluster #astro-ph.GA

paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aaab60

19 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

arxiv created 2018/01/08 · openalex publication_date 2018/03/10 · arxiv updated 2018/04/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Abstract We present a photometric study of the dwarf galaxy population in the core region (≲ r vir /4) of the Fornax galaxy cluster based on deep u ′ g ′ i ′ photometry from the Next Generation Fornax Cluster Survey . All imaging data were obtained with the Dark Energy Camera mounted on the 4 m Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory. We identify 258 dwarf galaxy candidates with luminosities −17 ≲ M g ′ ≲ −8 mag, corresponding to typical stellar masses of , reaching ∼3 mag deeper in point-source luminosity and ∼4 mag deeper in surface brightness sensitivity compared to the classic Fornax Cluster Catalog. Morphological analysis shows that the dwarf galaxy surface-brightness profiles are well represented by single-component Sérsic models with average Sérsic indices of and average effective radii of . Color–magnitude relations indicate a flattening of the galaxy red sequence at faint galaxy luminosities, similar to the one recently discovered in the Virgo cluster. A comparison with population synthesis models and the galaxy mass–metallicity relation reveals that the average faint dwarf galaxy is likely older than ∼5 Gyr. We study galaxy scaling relations between stellar mass, effective radius, and stellar mass surface density over a stellar mass range covering six orders of magnitude. We find that over the sampled stellar mass range several distinct mechanisms of galaxy mass assembly can be identified: (1) dwarf galaxies assemble mass inside the half-mass radius up to , (2) isometric mass assembly occurs in the range , and (3) massive galaxies assemble stellar mass predominantly in their halos at and above.

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Cited by

• The Next Generation Fornax Survey (NGFS). VI. The Alignment of Dwarf Galaxies in the Fornax Cluster
• OUP accepted manuscript
• Ultra diffuse galaxies in the MATLAS low-to-moderate density fields