CLUSTER ABELL 2192: morphological descriptions and luminosity profiles of it’s galaxy content

CLUSTER ABELL 2192: morphological descriptions and luminosity profiles of it’s galaxy

content

Fana Mariam Mulu

Advisors: Eric Wilcots and Mark Verheijen

Introduction

• A cluster of galaxies is a system of galaxies containing from several to thousands of galaxies.

•Clusters of galaxies are important tools in the study of cosmology.

•Clusters of galaxies can be regarded as the fundamental condensations of matter in the universe.

Our Cluster: Abell 2192

(Courtesy of Mark Verheijen)

What we know about Abell 2192:

•Object Type: Galaxy cluster

• RA: 16h26m37.2s

•DEC: 42d40m20s

•Velocity: > 30000

•Red shift (z): 0.187500

The “Project”:• To extract galaxies from our cluster and use their luminosity profiles to determine their morphology.

The “Questions”

• How do you go about the galaxy extraction?

• What are our tools for data reduction?

The “Tools”

•SExtractor: A program that builds a catalogue of objects from an astronomical image.

• GIPSY: a highly interactive software system for the reduction of our data.

• Super Mongo (SM): an interactive plotting package for drawing graphs.

Luminosity Profiles of Some of the extracted galaxies

• Bulge / r^1/4 profile

This profile shows that the galaxy is elliptical.

• “Pure” Exponential profile

Spiral galaxies have this profile.

•Irregular profile

This dropping curve indicates that the galaxy is irregular.

• Type II profile

This profile is common in barred-spirals.

So, why are we doing this again?

• In the future, further extensive research on the changes in luminosity profiles and morphological descriptions of galaxies in a cluster, might help us figure out how and when galaxy clusters evolved.

• The same procedure can be used to figure out what happens to the the galaxies when they are sucked into such clusters like Abell 2192.

•The different galaxy distributions, color, radio detection, flux, etc.. of the galaxies, can be calculated by using the “master table” we have compiled, from all the data we have gathered.

Acknowledgments

• Mark Verhieyen for your patience and guidance.

•Eric Wilcots for bringing us to Madison.

• Patricia, my partner in the project.

•The REU students for being so cool.

•Bob Benjamin for being the best director.