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

• 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

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.