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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astrophysical Journal
Main Authors: Fogarty, LMR, Bland-Hawthorn, J, Croom, SM, Green, AW, Bryant, JJ, Lawrence, JS, Richards, S, Allen, JT, Bauer, AE, Birchall, MN, Brough, S, Colless, M, Ellis, SC, Farrell, T, Goodwin, M, Heald, R, Hopkins, AM, Horton, A, Jones, DH, Lee, S, Lewis, G, López-Sánchez, AR, Miziarski, S, Trowland, H, Leon-Saval, SG, Min, SS, Trinh, C, Cecil, G, Veilleux, S, Kreimeyer, K
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: American Astronomical Society 2012
Subjects:
anzsrc-for: 0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences
anzsrc-for: 0202 Atomic
Molecular
Nuclear
Particle and Plasma Physics
anzsrc-for: 0306 Physical Chemistry (incl. Structural)
sami
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/unsworks_44971
https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/bitstreams/9cf7bebb-bb85-4629-8d91-ab3f871bc1cd/download
https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/761/2/169
Description
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. © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

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