Fast motions of galaxies in the Coma I cloud: a case of Dark Attractor?

TL;DR

This study analyzes galaxy motions in the Coma I cloud, revealing a Z-shaped infall pattern indicative of a dark attractor with a mass around 2×10^14 solar masses influencing local galaxy velocities.

Contribution

It identifies and characterizes a dark attractor in the Coma I region through galaxy velocity analysis, providing evidence for large-scale dark matter structures affecting galaxy motions.

Findings

Detection of a Z-shaped infall pattern in galaxy velocities.

Evidence for a dark attractor with mass ~2×10^14 solar masses.

Influence of voids on local Hubble flow.

Abstract

We notice that nearby galaxies having high negative peculiar velocities are distributed over the sky very inhomogeneously. A part of this anisotropy is caused by the "Local Velocity Anomaly", i.e. by the bulk motion of nearby galaxies away from the Local Void. But a half of the fast-flying objects reside within a small region RA = [11.5h, 13.0h], Dec. = [+20\circ, +40\circ], known as the Coma I cloud. According to Makarov & Karachentsev (2011), this complex contains 8 groups, 5 triplets, 10 pairs and 83 single galaxies with the total mass of 4.7\star10^13M\odot. We use 122 galaxies in the Coma I region with known distances and radial velocities VLG < 3000 km/s to draw the Hubble relation for them. The Hubble diagram shows a Z-shape effect of infall with an amplitude of +200 km/s on the nearby side and -700 km/s on the back side. This phenomena can be understood as the galaxy infall towards a dark attractor with the mass of \sim 2\star10^14M\odot situated at a distance of 15 Mpc from us. The existence of large void between the Coma and Virgo clusters affects probably the Hubble flow around the Coma I also.