Diffuse Light in the Virgo Cluster

Mihos, J. Christopher; Harding, Paul; Feldmeier, John J.; Morrison, Heather

doi:10.1086/497030

Cited by 427 publications

(686 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The absence of a significant number of luminous stellar streams and tidal tails between the galaxies in the core of the Fornax cluster suggests that the epoch of this strong interaction goes back to an early formation epoch. Thus, the extended stellar halo around NGC1399 is characterized by a more diffuse and well-mixed component, including the ICL, with respect to that of M87 or M49 in the Virgo cluster (Mihos et al 2005;Capaccioli et al 2015). This is an indication that the Fornax cluster could be in a more dynamically evolved phase than the Virgo cluster.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…This remains valid even considering that the Virgo cluster is about 3Mpc closer, so the faint structure in the light distribution detected in the Fornax cluster would have an absolute magnitude only ∼0.3mag brighter. On the other hand, at the same faint level of surface brightness, around the giant bright galaxies M49, M86, and M87, several tidal tails are detected, some of them very extended, up to 100 kpc (Mihos et al 2005;Janowiecki et al 2010;Rudick et al 2010;Capaccioli et al 2015;Longobardi et al 2015a). This observational fact might suggest that we are tracing two different epochs of the halo assembly in the two clusters: the Fornax cluster could be in a more dynamically evolved phase (Grillmair et al 1994;Jordán et al 2007), where most of the gravitational interactions between galaxies have already taken place and streams and tails are already dispersed into the intracluster medium or are below the observable surface brightness level.…”

Section: What Do Theoretical Studies On Halo Formation Predictmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…In the recent years, a big effort has been made to develop deep photometric surveys aimed at studying galaxy structures up to the faintest levels of surface brightness, which reveal lowluminosity structures and trace the stellar halos at very large distances from the galaxy center (Mihos et al 2005;Janowiecki et al 2010;Martínez-Delgado et al 2010;Roediger et al 2011;Ferrarese et al 2012;van Dokkum et al 2014;Duc et al 2015;Muñoz et al 2015;Trujillo & Fliri 2015). Recently, deep images of the Virgo cluster have revealed several faint (μ V =26-29 mag arcsec −2 ) streams of ICL among the galaxy members and made it possible to map the stellar halos of the bright cluster galaxies (BCGs) at very large distances from the center (Janowiecki et al 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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THE FORNAX DEEP SURVEY WITH VST. I. THE EXTENDED AND DIFFUSE STELLAR HALO OF NGC 1399 OUT TO 192 kpc

Iodice

Capaccioli

Grado

et al. 2016

ApJ

174

342

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We have started a new, deep multi-imaging survey of the Fornax cluster, dubbed the Fornax Deep Survey (FDS), at the VLT Survey Telescope (VST). In this paper we present the deep photometry inside two square degrees around the bright galaxy NGC1399 in the core of the cluster. We found that the core of the Fornax cluster is characterized by a very extended and diffuse envelope surrounding the luminous galaxy NGC1399: we map the surface brightness out to 33 arcmin (∼192 kpc) from the galaxy center and down to μ g ∼31 mag arcsec −2 in the g band. The deep photometry allows us to detect a faint stellar bridge in the intracluster region on the west side of NGC1399 and toward NGC1387. By analyzing the integrated colors of this feature, we argue that it could be due to the ongoing interaction between the two galaxies, where the outer envelope of NGC1387 on its east side is stripped away. By fitting the light profile, we found that there exists a physical break radius in the total light distribution at R=10 arcmin (∼58 kpc) that sets the transition region between the bright central galaxy and the outer exponential halo, and that the stellar halo contributes 60% of the total light of the galaxy (Section 3.5). We discuss the main implications of this work on the build-up of the stellar halo at the center of the Fornax cluster. By comparing with the numerical simulations of the stellar halo formation for the most massive bright cluster galaxies (i.e., M M 13 log 14, we find that the observed stellar halo mass fraction is consistent with a halo formed through the multiple accretion of progenitors with stellar mass in the range 10 8 -10 11 M e . This might suggest that the halo of NGC1399 has also gone through a major merging event. The absence of a significant number of luminous stellar streams and tidal tails out to 192 kpc suggests that the epoch of this strong interaction goes back to an early formation epoch. Therefore, different from the Virgo cluster, the extended stellar halo around NGC1399 is characterized by a more diffuse and well-mixed component, including the intracluster light.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: What Do Theoretical Studies On Halo Formation Predictmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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THE FORNAX DEEP SURVEY WITH VST. I. THE EXTENDED AND DIFFUSE STELLAR HALO OF NGC 1399 OUT TO 192 kpc

Iodice

Capaccioli

Grado

et al. 2016

ApJ

174

342

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show abstract

“…Mihos et al 2005;Zibetti et al 2005;Rudick et al 2006). The ICL is thought to be made up primarily by stars which were tidally stripped from their parent galaxy during interactions and mergers with other cluster galaxies.…”

Section: Intra Cluster Lightmentioning

confidence: 98%

The IAC Stripe 82 Legacy Project: a wide-area survey for faint surface brightness astronomy

Fliri¹,

Trujillo²

2015

Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.

135

118

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We present new deep co-adds of data taken within Stripe 82 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), especially stacked to reach the faintest surface brightness limits of this data set. Stripe 82 covers 275 deg 2 within -50 • RA +60 • and -1.• 25 Dec. +1.• 25. We discuss the steps of our reduction which puts special emphasis on preserving the characteristics of the background (sky + diffuse light) in the input images using a non-aggressive sky subtraction strategy. Our reduction reaches a limit of ∼28.5 mag arcsec −2 (3σ, 10×10 arcsec 2 ) in the r band. The effective surface brightness limit (50% completeness for exponential light distribution) lies at < µ e (r) >∼25.5 mag arcsec −2 . For point sources, we reach 50% completeness limits (3σ level) of (24.2, 25.2, 24.7, 24.3, 23.0) mag in (u, g, r, i, z). This is between 1.7 and 2.0 mag deeper than the single-epoch SDSS releases. The co-adds show point spread functions (PSFs) with median full width at half-maximum values ranging from 1 arcsec in i and z to 1.3 arcsec in the u band. The imaging data are made publicly available at http://www.iac.es/proyecto/stripe82. The release includes deep co-adds and representations of the PSF for each field. Additionally, we provide object catalogues with stars and galaxies confidently separated until g∼23 mag. The IAC Stripe 82 co-adds offer a rather unique possibility to study the low surface brightness Universe, exemplified by the discovery of stellar streams around NGC0426 and NGC0936. We also discuss further science cases like stellar haloes and disc truncations, low surface brightness galaxies, the intra-cluster light in galaxy clusters and the diffuse emission of Galactic dust known as Galactic Cirrus.

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“…Kim & Im 2013), refurbished or dedicated instruments (e.g. Mihos et al 2005;van Dokkum et al 2014), extremely long exposures on small telescopes (e.g. Martínez-Delgado et al 2010), or LSB-optimized surveys, such as the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS, Ferrarese et al 2012), or the MegaCam component of the ATLAS 3D project (Duc et al 2014), to be completed thanks to the MATLAS CFHT Large Programme.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applying galactic archeology to massive galaxies using deep imaging surveys

Duc

2014

Proc. IAU

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Abstract. Various programs aimed at exploring the still largely unknown low surface brightness Universe with deep imaging optical surveys have recently started. They open a new window for studies of galaxy evolution, pushing the technique of galactic archeology outside the Local Group (LG). The method, based on the detection and analysis of the diffuse light emitted by collisional debris or extended stellar halos (rather than on stellar counts as done for LG systems), faces however a number of technical difficulties, like the contamination of the images by reflection halos and Galactic cirrus. I review here the on-going efforts to address them and highlight the preliminary promising results obtained with a systematic survey with MegaCam on the CFHT of nearby massive early-type galaxies done as part of the ATLAS 3D , NGVS and MATLAS collaborations.

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Diffuse Light in the Virgo Cluster

Cited by 427 publications

References 21 publications

THE FORNAX DEEP SURVEY WITH VST. I. THE EXTENDED AND DIFFUSE STELLAR HALO OF NGC 1399 OUT TO 192 kpc

THE FORNAX DEEP SURVEY WITH VST. I. THE EXTENDED AND DIFFUSE STELLAR HALO OF NGC 1399 OUT TO 192 kpc

The IAC Stripe 82 Legacy Project: a wide-area survey for faint surface brightness astronomy

Applying galactic archeology to massive galaxies using deep imaging surveys

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