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Planetary Nebulae as dynamical tracers of galaxies and galaxy clusters

Objective

Extragalactic Planetary Nebulae (PNe) have been adopted in the last decades to map the kinematics and the mass distribution in galaxy outskirts where standard dynamical tracers are lacking.

Recently PNe have been discovered in the space between galaxies in galaxy clusters disclosing the presence of a diffuse stellar population not belonging to any galaxy, but free flying in the cluster potential. N-body cosmological simulations are now able to make a number of prediction on the dynamical properties of the baryons cooled in stars from galaxy scale to galaxy cluster scales.

These predictions need to be confirmed by the observations in order to have a final assessment on the underlying formation theories. PNe have opened new perspectives in the understanding o f the evolution of individual galaxies and galaxy clusters, their inner structure and dynamics since they offer the observational basis for these theories.

We propose a research project aimed to the use of oncoming data from different PN surveys in nearby group and clusters to produce discrete radial velocity fields - namely position and velocity distribution along the line-of-sight - to compare with expectation from N-body simulations.

Call for proposal

FP6-2002-MOBILITY-11
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Coordinator

ISTITUTO NAZIONALE DI ASTROFISICA
EU contribution
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Address
Viale di Parco Mellini, 84
ROMA
Italy

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