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Published November 20, 2010 | Published
Journal Article Open

N-body simulation of the Stephan's quintet

Abstract

The evolution of compact groups of galaxies may represent one of the few places in the nearby universe in which massive galaxies are being forged through a complex set of processes involving tidal interaction, ram-pressure stripping, and perhaps finally "dry mergers" of galaxies stripped of their cool gas. Using collisionless N-body simulations, we propose a possible scenario for the formation of one of the best-studied compact groups: Stephan's Quintet. We define a serial approach which allows us to consider the history of the group as a sequence of galaxy–galaxy interactions seen as relatively separate events in time, but chained together in such a way as to provide a plausible scenario that ends in the current configuration of the galaxies. By covering a large set of parameters, we claim that it is very unlikely that both major tidal tails of the group have been created by the interaction between the main galaxy and a single intruder. We propose instead a scenario based on two satellites orbiting the main disk, plus the recent involvement of an additional interloper, coming from the background at high speed. This purely N-body study of the quintet will provide a parameter-space exploration of the basic dynamics of the group that can be used as a basis for a more sophisticated N-body/hydrodynamic study of the group that is necessary to explain the giant shock structure and other purely gaseous phenomena observed in both the cold, warm and hot gas in the group.

Additional Information

© 2010 American Astronomical Society. Received 2010 March 1; accepted 2010 September 13; published 2010 October 28. We acknowledge the anonymous referee for very constructive comments that helped to improve this work. We thank Curt Struck, Jeong-Sun Hwang, and Ute Lisenfled for interesting discussions, and Christian Boily and Christian Theis for their support during this work. This work is based and inspired, in part, by observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. Partial support for this work was provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech. FR is a member of the IKI033-N Cosmic Matter Circuit at the University of Vienna.

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