Issue |
A&A
Volume 501, Number 2, July II 2009
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 437 - 443 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/200810563 | |
Published online | 13 May 2009 |
A surviving disk from a galaxy collision at z = 0.4
1
GEPI, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, Université Paris Diderot, 5 Place Jules Janssen, Meudon, France e-mail: yanbin.yang@obspm.fr
2
ESO, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
Received:
10
July
2008
Accepted:
1
April
2009
Context. Spiral galaxies dominate the local galaxy population. Disks are known to be fragile to collisions. Thus it is worthwhile to probe under what conditions a disk can possibly survive such interactions.
Aims. We present a detailed morpho-kinematic study of a massive galaxy with two nuclei, J033210.76–274234.6, at .
Methods. The morphological analysis reveals that the object consists of two bulges and a massive disk, as well as a faint blue ring. Combining the kinematics with morphology we propose a near-center collision model for the object.
Results. We find that the massive disk is likely to have survived the collision of galaxies with an initial mass ratio of ~4:1. The N-body/Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations show that the collision possibly is a polar collision with a very small pericentric distance of ~1 kpc, and that the remnant of the main galaxy will be dominated by a disk. The results support the disk survival hypothesis.
Conclusions. The survival of the disk is related to the polar collision with an extremely small pericentric distance. With the help of N-body/SPH simulations we find that the probability of disk survival is quite large regardless of whether the two galaxies merge or not.
Key words: galaxies: formation / galaxies: evolution / galaxies: kinematics and dynamics / galaxies: interactions
© ESO, 2009
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