Ram Pressure Stripping in the Virgo Cluster
COMBES, Francoise
Laboratoire d'Etude du Rayonnement et de la Matière en Astrophysique [LERMA]
Collège de France - Chaire Galaxies et cosmologie
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Laboratoire d'Etude du Rayonnement et de la Matière en Astrophysique [LERMA]
Collège de France - Chaire Galaxies et cosmologie
COMBES, Francoise
Laboratoire d'Etude du Rayonnement et de la Matière en Astrophysique [LERMA]
Collège de France - Chaire Galaxies et cosmologie
< Reduce
Laboratoire d'Etude du Rayonnement et de la Matière en Astrophysique [LERMA]
Collège de France - Chaire Galaxies et cosmologie
Language
en
Article de revue
This item was published in
Astronomy and Astrophysics - A&A. 2015-07, vol. 582, p. id.A6
EDP Sciences
English Abstract
Gas can be violently stripped from their galaxy disks in rich clusters, and be dispersed over 100kpc-scale tails or plumes. Young stars have been observed in these tails, suggesting they are formed in situ. This will ...Read more >
Gas can be violently stripped from their galaxy disks in rich clusters, and be dispersed over 100kpc-scale tails or plumes. Young stars have been observed in these tails, suggesting they are formed in situ. This will contribute to the intracluster light, in addition to tidal stripping of old stars. We want to quantify the efficiency of intracluster star formation. We present CO(1--0) and CO(2--1) observations, made with the IRAM-30m telescope, towards the ram-pressure stripped tail northeast of NGC4388 in Virgo. HII regions found all along the tails, together with dust patches have been targeted. We detect molecular gas in 4 positions along the tail, with masses between 7x10$^5$ to 2x10$^6$ M$_\odot$. Given the large distance from the NGC 4388 galaxy, the molecular clouds must have formed in situ, from the HI gas plume. We compute the relation between surface densities of star formation and molecular gas in these regions, and find that the star formation has very low efficiency. The corresponding depletion time of the molecular gas can be up to 500 Gyr and more. Since this value exceeds a by far Hubble time, this gas will not be converted into stars, and will stay in a gaseous phase to join the intracluster medium.Read less <
English Keywords
galaxies: evolution
galaxies: clusters: individual: Virgo
galaxies: clusters: intracluster medium
galaxies: ISM
galaxies: interactions
Origin
Hal imported