Hintze Centre for Astrophysical Surveys

Abstract:

Abstract A thermonuclear explosion triggered by a He-shell detonation on a carbon–oxygen white-dwarf core has been predicted to have strong UV line blanketing at early times due to the iron-group elements produced during He-shell burning. We present the photometric and spectroscopic observations of SN 2016dsg, a subluminous peculiar Type I supernova consistent with a thermonuclear explosion involving a thick He shell. With a redshift of 0.04, the i -band peak absolute magnitude is derived to be around −17.5. The object is located far away from its host, an early-type galaxy, suggesting it originated from an old stellar population. The spectra collected after the peak are unusually red, show strong UV line blanketing and weak O i λ 7773 absorption lines, and do not evolve significantly over 30 days. An absorption line around 9700–10500 Å is detected in the near-infrared spectrum and is likely from the unburnt He in the ejecta. The spectroscopic evolution is consistent with the thermonuclear explosion models for a sub-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf with a thick He shell, while the photometric evolution is not well described by existing models.

Abstract:

In this work, we extend the catalog of low-surface brightness (LSB) galaxies, including ultra-diffuse galaxy (UDG) candidates, within ≈0.4 Rvir of the Hydra I cluster of galaxies based on deep images from the VST Early-type GAlaxy Survey (VEGAS). The new galaxies were found by applying an automatic detection tool and carrying out additional visual inspections of g and r band images. This led to the detection of 11 UDGs and 8 more LSB galaxies. For all of them, we assessed the cluster membership using the color- magnitude relation derived for early-type giant and dwarf galaxies in Hydra I. The UDGs and new LSB galaxies found in Hydra I span a wide range of central surface brightness (22.7 ≤ μ0,g ≤ 26.5 mag arcsec-2), effective radius (0.6 ≤ Re ≤ 4.0 kpc), and color (0.4 ≤ g-r ≤ 0.9 mag), and have stellar masses in the range ∼5 × 106-2 × 108 MO. The 2D projected distribution of both galaxy types is similar to the spatial distribution of dwarf galaxies, with over-densities in the cluster core and north of the cluster center. They have similar color distribution and comparable stellar masses to the red dwarf galaxies. Based on photometric selection, we identify a total of nine globular cluster (GC) candidates associated to the UDGs and four to the LSB galaxies, with the highest number of candidates in an individual UDG being three.We find that there are no relevant differences between dwarfs, LSB galaxies, and UDGs: the structural parameters (i.e., surface brightness, size, color, and n-index) and GC content of the three classes have similar properties and trends. This finding is consistent with UDGs being the extreme LSB tail of the size-luminosity distribution of dwarfs in this environment