Tidal Dwarf Galaxies Bonn 2009: Ghosts from structure formation

Physics Centre Bad Honnef (Germany), May 25-29, 2009

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Talk

Title: Stripped GCs in the Fornax Cluster?

Date: Tuesday 26th May

Time: 17:30 - 17:45

Presentation file: talk_Schubert.pdf

Abstract:

The well–studied Fornax cluster, at a distance of 19 Mpc is an excellent candidate to study tidal stripping effects on the globular cluster (GC) populations of its galaxies. NGC 1399, the central dominant elliptical is known to host a very populous and extended GC system, while the neigh- bouring ellipticals have surprisingly few GCs. This has been interpreted as a sign for tidal stripping. Due to their shallower spatial distribution, metal–poor (blue) GCs are more likely to get stripped than the metal–rich (red) GCs which are more strongly concentrated towards the host galaxy. Indeed, the elliptical galaxies in the vicinity of NGC 1399 show unusally low fractions of blue GCs. Using the largest set of GC velocities available to data, we search for kinematic evidence that NGC 1404 (at a projected distance of ∼ 50 kpc from NGC 1399) lost a fraction of its metal–poor GCs in an encounter with the central galaxy.

photos by Julia T. Scho (ForeignLight.com) / Marcel S. Pawlowski