Issue |
A&A
Volume 649, May 2021
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A30 | |
Number of page(s) | 19 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202040261 | |
Published online | 06 May 2021 |
Bar pattern speeds in CALIFA galaxies
III. Solving the puzzle of ultrafast bars
1
Instituto de Astronomía y Ciencias Planetarias, Universidad de Atacama, Avenida Copayapu 485, Copiapó, Chile
e-mail: virginia.cuomo@uda.cl
2
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “G. Galilei”, Universit di Padova, vicolo dell’Osservatorio 3, 35122 Padova, Italy
3
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, 776 Daedeokdae-ro, Yuseong-gu, 34055 Daejeon, Korea
4
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, calle Vía Líctea s/n, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
5
Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, Avenida Astrofísico Francisco Sánchez s/n, 38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
6
INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, vicolo dell’Osservatorio 2, 35122 Padova, Italy
Received:
30
December
2020
Accepted:
27
February
2021
Context. More than 10% of barred galaxies with a direct measurement of the bar pattern speed host an ultrafast bar. These bars extend well beyond the corotation radius and challenge our understanding of the orbital structure of barred galaxies. Most of the bars are found in spiral galaxies, rather than in lenticular galaxies.
Aims. We analyse the properties of the ultrafast bars detected in the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Spectroscopy Area Survey to investigate whether they are an artefact resulting from an overestimation of the bar radius and/or an underestimation of the corotation radius or a new class of bars, whose orbital structure has not been understood yet.
Methods. We revised the available measurements of the bar radius based on ellipse fitting and Fourier analysis and of the bar pattern speed from the Tremaine-Weinberg method. In addition, we measured the bar radius from the analysis of the maps tracing the transverse-to-radial force ratio, which we obtained from the deprojected i-band images of the galaxies retrieved from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Results. We found that nearly all the sample galaxies are spirals with an inner ring or pseudo-ring circling the bar and/or with strong spiral arms, which hamper the measurement of the bar radius from the ellipse fitting and Fourier analysis. According to these methods, the bar ends overlap with the ring or the spiral arms, thereby making the adopted bar radius unreliable. On the contrary, the bar radius from the ratio maps are shorter than the corotation radius. This agrees with the theoretical predictions and findings of numerical simulations regarding the extension and stability of the stellar orbits supporting the bars.
Conclusions. We conclude that ultrafast bars are no longer observed when the correct measurement of the bar radius is adopted. Deriving the bar radius in galaxies with rings and strong spiral arms is not straightforward and a solid measurement method based on both photometric and kinematic data is still missing.
Key words: galaxies: kinematics and dynamics / galaxies: structure / galaxies: formation / galaxies: evolution / galaxies: fundamental parameters
© ESO 2021
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