Bibcode
Leaman, Ryan; Venn, Kim A.; Brooks, Alyson M.; Battaglia, Giuseppina; Cole, Andrew A.; Ibata, Rodrigo A.; Irwin, Mike J.; McConnachie, Alan W.; Mendel, J. Trevor; Tolstoy, Eline
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 750, Issue 1, article id. 33, 20 pp. (2012).
Advertised on:
5
2012
Journal
Citations
99
Refereed citations
91
Description
We present spectroscopic data for 180 red giant branch (RGB) stars in
the isolated dwarf irregular galaxy Wolf-Lundmark-Mellote (WLM).
Observations of the calcium II triplet lines in spectra of RGB stars
covering the entire galaxy were obtained with FORS2 at the Very Large
Telescope and DEIMOS on Keck II, allowing us to derive velocities,
metallicities, and ages for the stars. With accompanying photometric and
radio data we have measured the structural parameters of the stellar and
gaseous populations over the full galaxy. The stellar populations show
an intrinsically thick configuration with 0.39 <= q 0
<= 0.57. The stellar rotation in WLM is measured to be 17 ± 1
km s-1 however, the ratio of rotation to pressure support for
the stars is V/σ ~ 1, in contrast to the gas, whose ratio is seven
times larger. This, along with the structural data and alignment of the
kinematic and photometric axes, suggests we are viewing WLM as a highly
inclined oblate spheroid. Stellar rotation curves, corrected for
asymmetric drift, are used to compute a dynamical mass of (4.3 ±
0.3) × 108 M ⊙ at the half-light radius
(rh = 1656 ± 49 pc). The stellar velocity dispersion
increases with stellar age in a manner consistent with giant molecular
cloud and substructure interactions producing the heating in WLM.
Coupled with WLM's isolation, this suggests that the extended vertical
structure of its stellar and gaseous components and increase in stellar
velocity dispersion with age are due to internal feedback, rather than
tidally driven evolution. These represent some of the first
observational results from an isolated Local Group dwarf galaxy that can
offer important constraints on how strongly internal feedback and
secular processes modulate star formation and dynamical evolution in
low-mass isolated objects.