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The Ying and Yang of the M 83 Nucleus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2010

Damián Mast
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA/CSIC), 18008 Granada, Spain
Rubén J. Díaz
Affiliation:
Gemini Observatory, AURA, 950 N Cherry Ave, Tucson, AZ 85719
Horacio A. Dottori
Affiliation:
Instituto de Física – Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil
María P. Agüero
Affiliation:
Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba, 5000 Córdoba, Argentina
Irapuán Rodrigues
Affiliation:
Universidade do Vale do Paraiba, UNIVAP, São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil
Juan F. Albacete-Colombo
Affiliation:
Universidad del Comahue, Viedma, CP8500 Rio Negro, Argentina
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The spiral galaxy M 83, an SB(rs)b at only 4.5 Mpc, is a privileged case for study of the detailed physics on spatial scales of a tenth of a parsec. With 3-D spectroscopic observations using CIRPASS on Gemini-S, we studied the ionized gas properties in J-band with spatial resolution of 0.″5 (Figure 1). The Paβ velocity field shows two dynamical centers, neither of them coincident with the bulge center, identified with the optical nucleus (ON) and the hidden nucleus (HN), with masses, within a radius of 10 pc, of MON = (1.8±0.4)× 107M and MHN = (1.0±0.4)× 107M. Using the Paβ equivalent width together with population synthesis models, we are able to estimate the ages of both mass concentrations, TON = 8 Myr and THN =6–7 Myr. Adding complexity to this puzzling scenario, we used GMOS+Gemini imaging and spectroscopy to study the radio source J133658.3–295105 (Dottori et al. 2008) and find that Hα emission at the position of this source is redshifted by ~130 km s−1 with respect to an M 83 H II region, leading us to face the possibility of that we are witnessing the ejection of an object by gravitational recoil from the M 83 nucleus. A fit to the X-ray spectrum obtained Chandra supports the association between this source and the disk of M 83 by the presence of the Fe Kα line at 6.7 keV.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2010

References

Dottori, H., Díaz, R., & Mast, D. 2008, AJ, 136, 2468CrossRefGoogle Scholar