Luminous globular clusters in NGC 5128 Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Dumont A.
  2. Seth A.C.
  3. Strader J.
  4. Voggel K.
  5. Sand D.J.
  6. Hughes A.K.,Caldwell N.
  7. Crnojevic D.
  8. Mateo M.
  9. Bailey J.I.
  10. Forbes D.A.
  11. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

The dense central regions of tidally disrupted galaxies can survive as ultracompact dwarfs (UCDs) that hide among the luminous globular clusters (GCs) in the halo of massive galaxies. An exciting confirmation of this model is the detection of overmassive black holes in the centers of some UCDs, which also lead to elevated dynamical mass-to-light ratios (M/Ldyn). Here we present new high-resolution spectroscopic observations of 321 luminous GC candidates in the massive galaxy NGC 5128/Centaurus A. Using these data we confirm 27 new luminous GCs, and measure velocity dispersions for 57 luminous GCs (with g-band luminosities between 2.5x10^5^ and 2.5x10^7^L_{sun}_), of which 48 are new measurements. Combining these data with size measurements from Gaia, we determine the M/L_dyn_ for all 57 luminous GCs. We see a clear bimodality in the M/L_dyn_ distribution, with a population of normal GCs with mean M/L_dyn_=1.51+/-0.31, and a second population of ~20 GCs with elevated mean M/L_dyn_=2.68+/-0.22. We show that black holes with masses ~4%-18% of the luminous GCs can explain the elevated mass-to-light ratios. Hence, it is plausible that the NGC 5128 sources with elevated M/L_dyn_ are mostly stripped galaxy nuclei that contain massive central black holes, though future high spatial resolution observations are necessary to confirm this hypothesis for individual sources. We also present a detailed discussion of an extreme outlier, VHH81-01, one of the largest and most massive GC in NGC 5128, making it an exceptionally strong candidate to be a tidally stripped nucleus.

Keywords
  1. globular-star-clusters
  2. radial-velocity
  3. visible-astronomy
  4. spectroscopy
  5. infrared-photometry
  6. broad-band-photometry
  7. galaxy-kinematics
  8. black-holes
  9. absolute-magnitude
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2022ApJ...929..147D
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/929/147
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/929/147
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.19290147

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History

2024-04-17T09:53:17Z
Resource record created
2024-04-17T09:53:17Z
Created
2025-07-18T20:13:11Z
Updated

Contact

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