Bibcode
DOI
Reverte, D.; Vílchez, J. M.; Hernández-Fernández, J. D.; Iglesias-Páramo, J.
Bibliographical reference
The Astronomical Journal, Volume 133, Issue 2, pp. 705-714.
Advertised on:
2
2007
Citations
19
Refereed citations
18
Description
We report on the detection of two Hα-emitting extremely compact
objects from deep images of the A634 and A539 clusters of galaxies at
z~0.03. Follow-up long-slit spectroscopy of these two unresolved sources
revealed that they are members of their respective clusters, showing H
II-type spectra. The luminosity and the extreme equivalent width of
Hα + [N II] measured for these sources, together with their very
compact appearance, has raised a question about the origin of these
intense starbursts in the cluster environment. We propose that the
compact starburst in A539 resulted from the compression of the
interstellar gas of a dwarf galaxy when entering the cluster core, while
the starburst galaxy in A634 is likely to be the result of a
galaxy-galaxy interaction, illustrating the preprocessing of galaxies
during their infall toward the central regions of clusters. The
contribution of these compact star-forming dwarf galaxies to the star
formation history of galaxy clusters is discussed, as well as a possible
link with the recently discovered early-type ultracompact dwarf
galaxies. We note that these extreme objects will rarely be detected in
normal magnitude-limited optical or NIR surveys, mainly due to their low
stellar masses (on the order of 106 Msolar),
whereas they will easily show up in dedicated Hα surveys given the
high equivalent width of their emission lines.