The Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey. III. A constraint on dust grain lifetime in early-type galaxies
- Creators
- Clemens, M. S.
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Fadda, D.
Abstract
Passive early-type galaxies (ETGs) provide an ideal laboratory for studying the interplay between dust formation around evolved stars and its subsequent destruction in a hot gas. Using Spitzer-IRS and Herschel data we compare the dust production rate in the envelopes of evolved AGB stars with a constraint on the total dust mass. Early-type galaxies which appear to be truly passively evolving are not detected by Herschel. We thus derive a distance independent upper limit to the dust grain survival time in the hostile environment of ETGs of <46 ± 25 Myr for amorphous silicate grains. This implies that ETGs which are detected at far-infrared wavelengths have acquired a cool dusty medium via interaction. Given likely time-scales for ram-pressure stripping, this also implies that only galaxies with dust in a cool (atomic) medium can release dust into the intra-cluster medium.
Additional Information
© 2010 ESO. Received 29 March 2010, Accepted 30 April 2010, Published online 16 July 2010. Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA. M.C. and A.B. acknowledge support from contract ASI/INAF I/016/07/0.Attached Files
Published - Clemens2010p11874Astron_Astrophys.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 21082
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20101201-080928610
- I/016/07/0
- Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI)/Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)
- Created
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2010-12-01Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field