First science with SAMI: A serendipitously discovered galactic wind in ESO 185-G031

• Main Authors: Fogarty, Lisa M R, Bland-Hawthorn, Joss, Croom, S, Green, Andrew W, Bryant, J., Lawrence, J S, Richards, Samuel, Allen, James T, Bauer, Amanda E, Birchall, Michael, Colless, Matthew, Lee, Steve, Lawrence, J, Horton, A J, Miziarski, Stan
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: IOP Publishing 2015
• Subjects: sami
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/78369

We present the first scientific results from the Sydney-AAO Multi-Object IFS (SAMI) at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. This unique instrument deploys 13 fused fiber bundles (hexabundles) across a one-degree field of view allowing simultaneous spatially resolved spectroscopy of 13 galaxies. During the first SAMI commissioning run, targeting a single galaxy field, one object (ESO 185-G031) was found to have extended minor axis emission with ionization and kinematic properties consistent with a large-scale galactic wind. The importance of this result is twofold: (1) fiber bundle spectrographs are able to identify low surface brightness emission arising from extranuclear activity and (2) such activity may be more common than presently assumed because conventional multi-object spectrographs use single-aperture fibers and spectra from these are nearly always dominated by nuclear emission. These early results demonstrate the extraordinary potential of multi-object hexabundle spectroscopy in future galaxy surveys.