Bibcode
Laine, S.; Knapen, J. H.; Perez-Ramirez, D.; Doyon, R.; Nadeau, D.
Referencia bibliográfica
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 302, Issue 2, pp. L33-L37.
Fecha de publicación:
1
1999
Número de citas
53
Número de citas referidas
44
Descripción
We report the discovery of trailing grand-design nuclear spiral
structure in the spiral galaxy NGC 5248. Two tightly wound red spiral
arms, with widths less than 1 arcsec (~ 75 pc), emanate at 1 arcsec
outside the quiescent nucleus of the galaxy, and can be followed for 3
arcsec, appearing to end before the radius of the circumnuclear
starburst `ring', which is at 5--6 arcsec or around 400 pc. Combining
our near-infrared Canada--France--Hawaii Telescope adaptive optics
results with traditional near-infrared and optical imaging, we show that
spiral structure is present in this galaxy at spatial scales covering
two orders of magnitude, from 100 pc to 15 kpc. Comparison with a Hubble
Space Telescope ultraviolet image shows how the location of the
circumnuclear star formation relates to the nuclear spiral structure. We
briefly discuss possible mechanisms that could be responsible for the
observed nuclear grand-design spiral structure.