銀河の直線フィラメント構造を発見(Astrophysics: Like pearls on a string)

ad

2025-02-06 ミュンヘン大学(LMU)

ミュンヘン大学(LMU)とORIGINSクラスターの研究者を中心とする国際チームは、8つの銀河が直線状に並ぶ細長いフィラメント構造を発見しました。このフィラメントは、全長約1,600万光年、直径数十万光年と、これまで知られている中で最も短く、細いものの一つです。さらに、研究チームは、アメリカ・ニューメキシコ州にある28基の電波望遠鏡からなるVery Large Array(VLA)を用いて、このフィラメント内に太陽質量の10^8.5から10^9.5倍に相当する巨大な水素ガス雲を検出しました。これらのガス雲は星を形成しておらず、ダークマターハロー内に存在すると考えられています。この発見は、シミュレーションで予測されていたフィラメント内の暗黒ガス雲の存在を初めて観測的に確認したものです。

<関連情報>

真珠の糸:まっすぐで細いフィラメント上の暗い銀河と明るい銀河 Pearls on a String: Dark and Bright Galaxies on a Strikingly Straight and Narrow Filament

M. Arabsalmani, S. Roychowdhury, B. Schneider, V. Springel, E. Le Floc’h, F. Bournaud, A. Burkert, J.-C. Cuillandre, P.-A. Duc, E. Emsellem,…
The Astrophysical Journal Letters  Published: 2025 February 5
DOI:10.3847/2041-8213/ada779

銀河の直線フィラメント構造を発見(Astrophysics: Like pearls on a string)

Abstract

We identify a chain of galaxies along an almost straight line in the nearby Universe with a projected length of ~5 Mpc. The galaxies are distributed within projected distances of only 7–105 kpc from the axis of the identified filament. They have redshifts in a very small range of z = 0.0361−0.0370 so that their radial velocities are consistent with galaxy proper motions. The filament galaxies are mainly star forming and have stellar masses in a range of 109.1−1010.7 M. We search for systems with similar geometrical properties in the full-sky mock galaxy catalog of the MillenniumTNG simulations and find that, although such straight filaments are unusual and rare, they are predicted by ΛCDM simulations (4% incidence). We study the cold H i gas in a 1.3 Mpc section of the filament through H i 21 cm emission line observations and detect 11 H i sources, many more than expected from the H i mass function in a similar volume. They have H i masses 108.5−109.5 M and are mostly within ~120 kpc projected distance from the filament axis. None of these H i sources has a confirmed optical counterpart. Their darkness together with their large H i 21 cm line widths indicates that they contain gas that might not yet be virialized. These clouds must be marking the peaks of the dark matter and H i distributions over large scales within the filament. The presence of such gas clouds around the filament spines is predicted by simulations, but this is the first time that the existence of such clouds in a filament is observationally confirmed.

1701物理及び化学
ad
ad
Follow
ad
タイトルとURLをコピーしました