Deepest far ultraviolet view of a central field in the Coma cluster by AstroSat UVIT

TL;DR

This study uses AstroSat UVIT to analyze far ultraviolet emissions in the Coma cluster's core, identifying cluster members, quasars, and galaxies with signs of ram-pressure stripping, revealing recent infall and diverse galaxy activity.

Contribution

First detailed FUV analysis of the Coma cluster core using AstroSat UVIT, identifying new galaxy features and quasar detections at unprecedented distances.

Findings

Detected three quasars, including the farthest UVIT object.

Identified galaxies with signs of ram-pressure stripping.

Classified galaxy activity types using optical spectroscopy.

Abstract

We present analysis of the far ultraviolet (FUV) emission of sources in the central region of the Coma cluster (z=0.023) using the data taken by the UVIT aboard the multi-wavelength satellite mission AstroSat. We find a good correlation between the UVIT FUV flux and the fluxes in both wavebands of the Galex mission, for the common sources. We detect stars and galaxies, amongst which the brightest (r <= 17 mag) galaxies in the field of view are mostly members of the Coma cluster. We also detect three quasars (z = 0.38, 0.51, 2.31), one of which is likely the farthest object observed by the UVIT so far. In almost all the optical and UV colour-colour and colour-magnitude planes explored in this work, the Coma galaxies, other galaxies and bright stars could be separately identified, but the fainter stars and quasars often coincide with the faint galaxies. We have also investigated galaxies with unusual FUV morphology which are likely to be galaxies experiencing ram-pressure stripping in the cluster. Amongst others, two confirmed cluster members which were not investigated in the literature earlier, have been found to show unusual FUV emission. All the distorted sources are likely to have fallen into the cluster recently, and hence have not virialised yet. A subset of our data have optical spectroscopic information available from the archives. For these sources (~ 10% of the sample), we find that 17 galaxies identify as star-forming, 18 as composite and 13 as host galaxies for active galactic nuclei, respectively on the emission-line diagnostic diagram.