First science with SAMI: A serendipitously discovered galactic wind in ESO 185-G031
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 th...
Published in: | The Astrophysical Journal |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | unknown |
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IOP Publishing
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Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1885/78369 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/761/2/169 https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/78369/5/f5625xPUB70222012.pdf.jpg https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/78369/7/01_Fogarty_First_science_with_SAMI%3a_A_2012.pdf.jpg |
Summary: | 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. |
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