IATE   20350
INSTITUTO DE ASTRONOMIA TEORICA Y EXPERIMENTAL
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
artículos
Título:
Isophotal Structure and Dust Distribution in Radio-loud Elliptical Galaxies
Autor/es:
TREMBLAY, G.R.; CHIABERGE, M.; DONZELLI, C.J.; QUILLEN, A.C.; CAPETTI, A.; SPARKS, W.B; MACCHETTO, D.
Revista:
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Editorial:
University Chicago Press
Referencias:
Lugar: Chicago; Año: 2007 vol. 666 p. 109 - 121
ISSN:
0004-637X
Resumen:
We investigate isophotal properties and dust morphology in the nuclear
regions of 84 radio galaxies, imaged in the optical and near-infrared as
part of Hubble Space Telescope snapshot surveys. We present a
sample-wide trend between host galaxy isophotal structure and the
inclination of dusty circumnuclear disks at the centers of 13 of these
objects. We find that galaxies containing edge-on disks are invariably
seen to possess boxy isophotes, while round, face-on disks are seen
exclusively in objects with round or elliptical isophotes. Dust-rich
sources with disky isophotes are observed only to possess dust in the
form of extended filamentary lanes, and not in settled distributions
like disks. As we do not expect that edge-on and face-on disks reside in
different populations of galaxies, we conclude that perceived isophotal
boxiness is dependent on the angle at which the observer views the host
galaxy's axis of symmetry. We discuss our results in the context of
dissipative merger scenarios, and infer that dusty disks primarily
reside in old, boxy remnants of gas-poor galaxy mergers, whereas
filamentary dust lanes reside in younger disky remnants of gas-rich
mergers.