Bibcode
DOI
Colina, Luis; Arribas, Santiago; Borne, Kirk D.; Monreal, Ana
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 533, Issue 1, pp. L9-L12.
Advertised on:
4
2000
Journal
Citations
20
Refereed citations
17
Description
Integral field optical spectroscopy with the INTEGRAL fiber-fed system
and Hubble Space Telescope optical imaging are used to map the complex
stellar and warm ionized gas structure in the ultraluminous infrared
galaxy IRAS 12112+0305. Images reconstructed from wavelength-delimited
extractions of the integral field spectra reveal that the observed
ionized gas distribution is decoupled from the stellar main body of the
galaxy, with the dominant continuum and emission-line regions separated
by projected distances of up to 7.5 kpc. The two optical nuclei are
detected as apparently faint emission-line regions, and their optical
properties are consistent with being dust-enshrouded weak [O I] LINERs.
The brightest emission-line region is associated with a faint
(mI=20.4), giant H II region of 600 pc diameter, in which a
young (~5 Myr) massive cluster of about 2x107
Msolar dominates the ionization. Internal reddening toward
the line-emitting regions and the optical nuclei ranges from 1 to 8 mag
in the visual. Taking the reddening into account, the overall star
formation in IRAS 12112+0305 is dominated by starbursts associated with
the two nuclei and corresponds to a star formation rate of 80
Msolar yr-1. Based on observations with the
William Herschel Telescope operated on the island of La Palma by the ING
in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto
de Astrofísica de Canarias. Based also on observations with the
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science
Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for
Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract number NAS5-26555.