The planetary nebula population in the halo of M87

Abstract

We investigate the diffuse light in the outer regions of the nearby elliptical galaxy M87 in the Virgo cluster, using planetary nebulas (PNs) as tracers. The surveyed areas (0.43 squared degrees) cover M87 up to a radial distance of 150 kpc, in the ransition region between galaxy halo and intracluster light (ICL). All PNs are identified through the on-off band technique using automatic selection criteria based on the distribution of the detected sources in the colour-magnitude diagram and the properties of their point-spread function. We extract a catalogue of 688 objects down to m_5007=28.4, with an estimated residual contamination from foreground stars and background Lyalpha galaxies, which amounts to ~35% of the sample. This is one of the largest extragalactic PN samples in number of candidates, magnitude depth, and radial extent, which allows us to carry out an unprecedented photometric study of the PN population in the outer regions of M87. We find that the logarithmic density profile of the PN distribution is shallower than the surface brightness profile at large radii. This behaviour is consistent with the superposition of two components associated with the halo of M87 and with the ICL, which have different luminosity specific PN numbers, the ICL contributing three times more PNs per unit light. Because of the depth of this survey we are also able to study the shape of the PN luminosity function (PNLF) in the outer regions of M87. We find a slope for the PNLF that is steeper at fainter magnitudes than the standard analytical PNLF formula and adopt a generalised model that treats the slope as a free parameter. Comparing the PNLF of M87 and the M31 bulge, both normalised by the sampled luminosity, the M87 PNLF contains fewer bright PNs and has a steeper slope towards fainter magnitudes.

16 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (9)

• Ly-alpha Emission-Line Galaxies at z = 3.1 in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South
• The Importance of Mergers for the Origin of Intracluster Stars in Cosmological Simulations of Galaxy Clusters
• Kinematic properties of early-type galaxy haloes using planetary nebulae
• A deep kinematic survey of planetary nebulae in the Andromeda Galaxy using the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph
• Planetary nebulae as tracers of galaxy stellar populations
• The Metallicity Distribution of Intracluster Stars in Virgo
• The evolution of planetary nebulae VII. Modelling planetary nebulae of distant stellar systems
• The Planetary Nebula Spectrograph survey of S0 galaxy kinematics. Data and Overview
• Toward better simulations of planetary nebulae luminosity functions

Cited by in corpus (43)

• The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. VIII. The Spatial Distribution of Globular Clusters in the Virgo Cluster
• The build-up of the cD halo of M87 - evidence for accretion in the last Gyr
• The Fornax Deep Survey with VST. VIII. Connecting the accretion history with the cluster density
• The extended Planetary Nebula Spectrograph (ePN.S) early-type galaxy survey. The kinematic diversity of stellar halos and the relation between halo transition scale and stellar mass
• The outer regions of the giant Virgo galaxy M87. Kinematic separation of stellar halo and intracluster light
• The Fornax3D project: Tracing the assembly history of the cluster from the kinematic and line-strength maps
• A kinematically distinct core and minor-axis rotation: the MUSE perspective on M87
• VEGAS: A VST Early-type GAlaxy Survey. III. Mapping the galaxy structure, interactions and intragroup light in the NGC 5018 group
• Clocking the formation of today's largest galaxies: Wide field integral spectroscopy of Brightest Cluster Galaxies and their surroundings
• An Investigation of intra-cluster light evolution using cosmological hydro-dynamical simulations
• The kinematics of the outer halo of M87 as mapped by planetary nebulae
• The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS) XXXI. The kinematics of intra-cluster globular clusters in the core of the Virgo cluster
• Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function distances for 19 galaxies observed by PHANGS-MUSE
• A Hubble Space Telescope Survey for Novae in M87. I. Light and Color Curves, Spatial Distributions and the Nova Rate
• Euclid: Early Release Observations -- The intracluster light and intracluster globular clusters of the Perseus cluster
• Three dynamically distinct stellar populations in the halo of M49
• The halo of M49 and its environment as traced by planetary nebulae
• Understanding the Unique Assembly History of Central Group Galaxies
• Kinematics of the diffuse intragroup and intracluster light in groups and clusters of galaxies in the Local Universe within 100 Mpc distance
• Fornax 3D project: automated detection of planetary nebulae in the centres of early-type galaxies and first results
• The halo of M105 and its group environment as traced by planetary nebula populations: I. Wide-field photometric survey of planetary nebulae in the Leo I group
• Intra-cluster Globular Clusters in a Simulated Galaxy Cluster
• The Fornax3D project: The assembly history of massive early-type galaxies in the Fornax cluster from deep imaging and integral field spectroscopy
• On the assembly history of massive galaxies. A pilot project with VEGAS deep imaging and M3G integral field spectroscopy
• The GALEX Ultraviolet Virgo Cluster Survey (GUViCS) VIII. Diffuse dust in the Virgo intra-cluster space
• Intracluster light is a biased tracer of the dark matter distribution in clusters
• Detection of the Stellar Intracluster Medium in Perseus (Abell 426)
• MUSE crowded field 3D spectroscopy in NGC 300 : IV. Planetary nebula luminosity function
• Clustering of Local Group distances: publication bias or correlated measurements? VI. Extending to Virgo cluster distances
• Euclid preparation LXX. Forecasting detection limits for intracluster light in the Euclid Wide Survey
• The MUSE view of the Sculptor galaxy: survey overview and the planetary nebulae luminosity function
• The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. XXXIII. Stellar Population Gradients in the Virgo Cluster Core Globular Cluster System
• Observational Signatures of Carbon-Oxygen White Dwarf Merger Remnants
• The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. XVII. A Search for Planetary Nebulae in Virgo Cluster Globular Clusters
• The PICS Project. I. The impact of metallicity and helium abundance on the bright end of the planetary nebula luminosity function
• A Virgo Environmental Survey Tracing Ionised Gas Emission. VESTIGE VIII. Bridging the cluster-ICM-galaxy evolution at small scales
• The Effect of Superpositions on the Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function
• The Planetary Nebulae Populations in the Local Group
• AT 2016dah and AT 2017fyp: the first classical novae discovered within a tidal stream
• Towards Precision Cosmology With Improved PNLF Distances Using VLT-MUSE. III. Impact of Stellar Populations in Early-Type Galaxy
• The survey of Planetary Nebulae in Andromeda (M31): I. Imaging the disk and halo with MegaCam@CFHT
• Planetary Nebulae and their parent stellar populations. Tracing the mass assembly of M87 and Intracluster light in the Virgo cluster core
• The Fornax3D project: Planetary nebulae catalogue and independent distance measurements to Fornax cluster galaxies