Galaxy interactions in the Hickson Compact Group 88

Abstract

I present observations of the Hickson Compact Group 88 (HCG88) obtained during the commissioning of a new 28-inch telescope at the Wise Observatory. This galaxy group was advertised to be non-interacting, or to be in a very early interaction stage, but this is not the case. The observations reported here were done using a "luminance" filter, essentially a very broad R filter, reaching a low surface brightness level of about 26 mag per square arcsec. Additional observations were obtained in a narrow spectral band approximately centered on the rest-frame H-alpha line from the group. Contrary to previous studies, my observations show that at least two of the major galaxies have had significant interactions in the past, although probably not between themselves. I report the discovery of a faint extended tail emerging from the brightest of the group galaxies, severe isophote twisting and possible outer shells around another galaxy, and map the HII regions in all the galaxies.

17 pages, 3 figures. MNRAS, in press

References in corpus (5)

• A Vast Thin Plane of Co-rotating Dwarf Galaxies Orbiting the Andromeda Galaxy
• Kinematics and simulations of the stellar stream in the halo of the Umbrella Galaxy
• Compact Groups of Galaxies selected by stellar mass: The 2MASS Compact Group Catalogue
• Deep Imaging of M51: a New View of the Whirlpool's Extended Tidal Debris
• The NGC 672 and NGC 784 Galaxy Groups: Evidence for Galaxy Formation and Growth Along a Nearby Dark Matter Filament

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The Halos and Environments of Nearby Galaxies (HERON) I: Imaging, Sample Characteristics, and Envelope Diameters
• Catalogs of Compact Groups of Galaxies from the Enhanced SDSS DR12