National Optical Astronomy Observatory | 2014 Dec 18
Galaxies – spirals laced with nests of recent star formation, quiescent ellipticals composed mainly of old red stars, and numerous faint dwarfs – are the basic visible building blocks of the Universe. Galaxies are rarely found in isolation, but rather in sparse groups – sort of galactic urban sprawl. But there are occasional dense concentrations, often found in the center of giant clusters, but also, intriguingly, as more isolated compact groups (and yes, called Compact Galaxy Groups or CGs). The galaxies in these Compact Groups show dramatic differences in the way they evolve and change with time compared with galaxies in more isolated surroundings. Why is this? Collisions between galaxies in these dense groups are common, leading to rapid star formation, but there seems to be more to the puzzle.
A team led by Dr Iraklis Konstantopoulos of the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) has now obtained spectacular images of some CGs with the Dark Energy camera attached to the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). This camera, constructed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, is able to image large areas of the sky to unprecedented faint limits. The team aims to combine these images with spectroscopic data from the AAO that will reveal the velocities of the galaxies, leading to a much better understanding of their gravitational interactions.
As Dr. David James (CTIO), who planned and obtained the images said, “The new images are absolutely brilliant, and reveal faint streams of gas and stars called tidal tails, created in the mutual gravitational interaction when two galaxies suffer a close encounter.” The tails, one preceding and one trailing the galaxy, persist long after the encounter, and allow the astronomers to calculate how long ago the event took place. The Dark Energy Camera, which can image a field four times the size of the full moon, is able to record these faint tidal tails, and the camera’s wide field will uncover unexpected surprises. ...
