HI Distribution and Tully-Fisher Distances of Gas-Poor Spiral Galaxies in the Virgo Cluster Region

TL;DR

This study uses VLA observations to analyze the HI distribution and kinematics of gas-poor spiral galaxies in the Virgo Cluster region, assessing their suitability for Tully-Fisher distance measurements.

Contribution

It provides detailed HI morphology and kinematic data for several Virgo spirals, confirming HI deficiency and evaluating the applicability of Tully-Fisher distances to these galaxies.

Findings

Most target galaxies are HI-deficient, except NGC 4411B.

None of the observed galaxies are suitable for Tully-Fisher distance estimation.

Some galaxies' HI disks are truncated or face-on, hindering TF analysis.

Abstract

We present aperture synthesis observations in the 21 cm line of pointings centered on the Virgo Cluster region spirals NGC 4307, NGC 4356, NGC 4411B, and NGC 4492 using the Very Large Array (VLA) radiotelescope in its CS configuration. These galaxies were identified in a previous study of the three-dimensional distribution of HI emission in the Virgo region as objects with a substantial dearth of atomic gas and Tully-Fisher (TF) distance estimates that located them well outside the main body of the cluster. We have detected two other galaxies located in two of our fields and observed bands, the spiral NGC 4411A and the dwarf spiral VCC 740. We provide detailed information of the gas morphology and kinematics for all these galaxies. Our new data confirm the strong HI-deficiency of all the main targets but NGC 4411B, which is found to have a fairly normal neutral gas content. The VLA observations have also been used to discuss the applicability of TF techniques to the five largest spirals we have observed. We conclude that none of them is actually suitable for a TF distance evaluation, whether due to the radical trimming of their neutral hydrogen disks (NGC 4307, NGC 4356, and NGC 4492) or to their nearly face-on orientation (NGC 4411A and B).