The Fornax Deep Survey with VST. II. Fornax A: a two-phase assembly caught on act

Abstract

As part of the Fornax Deep Survey with the ESO VLT Survey Telescope, we present new $g$ and $r$ bands mosaics of the SW group of the Fornax cluster. It covers an area of $3\times 2$ square degrees around the central galaxy NGC1316. The deep photometry, the high spatial resolution of OmegaCam and the large covered area allow us to study the galaxy structure, to trace stellar halo formation and look at the galaxy environment. We map the surface brightness profile out to 33arcmin ($\sim 200$kpc $\sim 15R_e$) from the galaxy centre, down to ${\mu }_g\sim 31$ mag arcsec${}^{-2}$ and ${\mu }_r\sim 29$ mag arcsec${}^{-2}$. This allow us to estimate the scales of the main components dominating the light distribution, which are the central spheroid, inside 5.5 arcmin ($\sim 33$ kpc), and the outer stellar envelope. Data analysis suggests that we are catching in act the second phase of the mass assembly in this galaxy, since the accretion of smaller satellites is going on in both components. The outer envelope of NGC1316 still hosts the remnants of the accreted satellite galaxies that are forming the stellar halo. We discuss the possible formation scenarios for NGC1316, by comparing the observed properties (morphology, colors, gas content, kinematics and dynamics) with predictions from cosmological simulations of galaxy formation. We find that {\it i)} the central spheroid could result from at least one merging event, it could be a pre-existing early-type disk galaxy with a lower mass companion, and {\it ii)} the stellar envelope comes from the gradual accretion of small satellites.

arXiv commentAccepeted for publication in ApJ

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