A Potential Galaxy Threshing System in the COSMOS Field

Creators: Sasaki, S. S.; Taniguchi, Y.; Scoville, N.; Mobasher, B.; Aussel, H.; Sanders, D. B.; Koekemoer, A. M.; Ajiki, M.; Komiyama, Y.; Miyazaki, S.; Kaifu, N.; Karoji, H.; Okamura, S.; Arimoto, N.; Ohta, K.; Shioya, Y.; Murayama, T.; Nagao, T.; Koda, J.; Hainline, L.; Renzini, A.; Giavalisco, M.; Le Fèvre, O.; Impey, C.; Elvis, M.; Lilly, S.; Rich, M.; Schinnerer, E.; Sheth, K.

Abstract

We report on the discovery of a new potential galaxy threshing system in the COSMOS 2 square degree field using the prime-focus camera, Suprime-Cam, on the 8.2 m Subaru Telescope. This system consists of a giant elliptical galaxy with M_V ≈ -21.6 and a tidally disrupted satellite galaxy with M_V ≈ -17.7 at a photometric redshift of z ≈ 0.08. This redshift is consistent with the spectroscopic redshift of 0.079 for the giant elliptical galaxy obtained from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) archive. The luminosity masses of the two galaxies are 3.7 × 10^(12) and 3.1 × 10^9 M☉, respectively. The distance between the two galaxies is greater than 100 kpc. The two tidal tails emanating from the satellite galaxy extend over 150 kpc. This system would be the second well-defined galaxy threshing system found so far.

Additional Information

© 2007 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2006 April 24; accepted 2006 November 5. Based on data collected at Subaru Telescope, which is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The HST COSMOS Treasury program was supported through NASA grant HST-GO-09822. We wish to thank Tony Roman, Denise Taylor, and David Soderblom for their assistance in planning and scheduling of the extensive COSMOS observations. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the entire COSMOS collaboration consisting of more than 70 scientists. More information on the COSMOS survey is available at http:// www.astro.caltech.edu/~cosmos. It is a pleasure the acknowledge the excellent services provided by the NASA IPAC/IRSA staff (Anastasia Laity, Anastasia Alexov, Bruce Berriman, and John Good) in providing on-line archive and server capabilities for the COSMOS data sets. The COSMOS Science meeting in 2005 May was supported in part by the NSF through grant OISE- 0456439. We would like to thank the Subaru Telescope staff for their invaluable assistance. IRAF (Image Reduction and Analysis Facility) is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. This work was financially supported in part by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (Nos. 10044052 and 10304013), and by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (15340059 and 17253001). S. S. S. and T. N. are financially supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) through JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists.

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