Bibcode
Davis, T. A.; Alatalo, K.; Bureau, M.; Young, L.; Blitz, L.; Crocker, A.; Bayet, E.; Bois, M.; Bournaud, F.; Cappellari, M.; Davies, R. L.; Duc, P.-A.; de Zeeuw, P. T.; Emsellem, E.; Falcon-Barroso, J.; Khochfar, S.; Krajnovic, D.; Kuntschner, H.; Lablanche, P.-Y.; McDermid, R. M.; Morganti, R.; Naab, T.; Sarzi, M.; Scott, N.; Serra, P.; Weijmans, A.
Referencia bibliográfica
Highlights of Astronomy, Volume 16, pp. 122-123
Fecha de publicación:
3
2015
Número de citas
0
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
In around ~25% of early-type galaxies (ETGs) UV emission from young
stellar populations is present. Molecular gas reservoirs have been
detected in these systems (e.g. Young et al. (2011), providing the fuel
for this residual star-formation. The environment in which this
molecular gas is found is quite different than that in spiral galaxies
however, with harsher radiation fields, deeper potentials and high
metallicity and alpha-element abundances. Here we report on one element
of our multi-faceted programme to understand the similarities and
differences between the gas reservoirs in spirals and ETGs. We use
spatially resolved observations from the CARMA mm-wave interferometer to
investigate the size of the molecular reservoirs in the the CO-rich
ATLAS3D ETGs (survey described in Alatalo et al. 2012,
submitted). We find that the molecular gas extent is smaller in absolute
terms in ETGs than in late-type galaxies, but that the size
distributions are similar once scaled by the galaxies optical/stellar
characteristic scale-lengths (Fig 1, left). Amongst ETGs, we find that
the extent of the molecular gas is independent of the kinematic
misalignment, despite the many reasons why misaligned gas might have a
smaller extent. The extent of the molecular gas does depend on
environment, with Virgo cluster ETGs having less extended molecular gas
reservoirs (Fig 1, right). Whatever the cause, this further emphases
that cluster ETGs follow different evolutionary pathways from those in
the field. Full details of this work will be presented in Davis et al.
(2012), submitted.