The Fornax3D project: discovery of ancient massive merger events in the Fornax cluster galaxies NGC 1380 and NGC 1427

TL;DR

This study uncovers ancient massive merger events in two Fornax cluster galaxies, using stellar population and orbital modeling to infer merger histories, including mass and timing, revealing the oldest and most massive mergers beyond the Local Volume.

Contribution

It introduces a novel orbital decomposition method applied to IFU data to identify relics of past massive mergers in early-type galaxies.

Findings

NGC 1380 experienced a merger with a satellite of about 3.7×10^{10} Msun ~10 Gyr ago.

NGC 1427's last major merger occurred less than 8 Gyr ago.

First quantitative merger history inference for a galaxy beyond the Local Volume.

Abstract

We report the discovery of ancient massive merger events in the early-type galaxies NGC 1380 and NGC 1427, members of the Fornax galaxy cluster. Both galaxies have been observed by the MUSE IFU instrument on the VLT, as part of the Fornax3D project. By fitting recently-developed population-orbital superposition models to the observed surface brightness as well as stellar kinematic, age, and metallicity maps, we obtain the stellar orbits, age and metallicity distributions of each galaxy. We then decompose each galaxy into multiple orbital-based components, including a dynamically hot inner stellar halo component which is identified as the relic of past massive mergers. By comparing to analogues from cosmological galaxy simulations, chiefly TNG50, we find that the formation of such a hot inner stellar halo requires the merger with a now-destroyed massive satellite galaxy of $3.7_{-1.5}^{+2.7} \times 10^{10}$ Msun (about $1/5$ of its current stellar mass) in the case of NGC 1380 and of $1.5_{-0.7}^{+1.6} \times10^{10}$ Msun (about $1/4$ of its current stellar mass) in the case of NGC 1427. Moreover, we infer that the last massive merger in NGC 1380 happened $\sim10$ Gyr ago based on the stellar age distribution of the re-grown dynamically cold disk, whereas the merger in NGC 1427 ended $t\lesssim 8$ Gyr ago based on the stellar populations in its hot inner stellar halo. The major merger event in NGC 1380 is the first one with both merger mass and merger time quantitatively inferred in a galaxy beyond the Local Volume. Moreover, it is the oldest and most massive merger uncovered in nearby galaxies so far.