Bibcode
Font, J.; Beckman, J. E.; Rosado, Margarita; Epinat, Benoît; Fathi, K.; Hernandez, Olivier; Carignan, Claude; Gutiérrez, L.; Relaño, Monica; Blasco-Herrera, Javier; Fuentes-Carrera, Isaura
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 740, Issue 1, article id. L1 (2011).
Advertised on:
10
2011
Citations
12
Refereed citations
11
Description
Using velocity tagging we have detected hydrogen from NGC 5426 falling
onto its interacting partner NGC 5427. Our observations, with the GHaFaS
Fabry-Perot spectrometer, produced maps of the two galaxies in Hα
surface brightness and radial velocity. We found emission with the range
of velocities associated with NGC 5426 along lines of sight apparently
emanating from NGC 5427, superposed on the velocity map of the latter.
After excluding instrumental effects we assign the anomalous emission to
gas pulled from NGC 5426 during its passage close to NGC 5427. Its
distribution, more intense between the arms and just outside the disk of
NGC 5427, and weak, or absent, in the arms, suggests that the infalling
gas is behind the disk, ionized by Lyman continuum photons escaping from
NGC 5427. Modeling this, we estimate the distances of these gas clouds
behind the plane: a few hundred parsecs to a few kiloparsecs. We also
estimate the mass of the infalling (ionized plus neutral) gas, finding
an infall rate of 10 M sun per year, consistent with the high
measured star formation rate across the disk of NGC 5427 and with the
detected circumnuclear galactic wind.