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The Cheshire Cat Gravitational Lens: The Formation of a Massive Fossil Group by Irwin, Jimmy A.; Dupke, Renato; Carrasco, Eleazar R.; Maksym, W. Peter; Johnson, Lucas; White, Raymond E. is a scholarly article available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Cheshire Cat Gravitational Lens: The Formation of a Massive Fossil Group about?

The Cheshire Cat is a relatively poor group of galaxies dominated by two luminous elliptical galaxies surrounded by at least four arcs from gravitationally lensed background galaxies that give the system a humorous appearance. Our combined optical/X-ray study of this system reveals that it is experiencing a line of sight merger between two groups with a roughly equal mass ratio with a relative velocity of ~1350 km/s. One group was most likely a low-mass fossil group, while the other group would have almost fit the classical definition of a fossil group. The collision manifests itself in a bimodal galaxy velocity distribution, an elevated central X-ray temperature and luminosity indicative of a shock, and gravitational arc centers that do not coincide with either large elliptical galaxy. One of the luminous elliptical galaxies has a double nucleus embedded off-center in the stellar halo. The luminous ellipticals should merge in less than a Gyr, after which observers will see a massive 1.2-1.5 x 10^14 solar mass fossil group with an M_r = -24.0 brightest group galaxy at its center. Thus, the Cheshire Cat offers us the first opportunity to study a fossil group progenitor. We discuss t

Author

Irwin, Jimmy A.; Dupke, Renato; Carrasco, Eleazar R.; Maksym, W. Peter; Johnson, Lucas; White, Raymond E.

Published

2015

Language

EN