A slow bar in the lenticular barred galaxy NGC 4277

Abstract

Aims: We characterised the properties of the bar hosted in lenticular galaxy NGC 4277, which is located behind the Virgo cluster. Methods: We measured the bar length and strength from the surface photometry obtained from the broad-band imaging of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and we derived the bar pattern speed from the stellar kinematics obtained from the integral-field spectroscopy performed with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer at the Very Large Telescope. We also estimated the co-rotation radius from the circular velocity, which we constrained by correcting the stellar streaming motions for asymmetric drift, and we finally derived the bar rotation rate. Results: We found that NGC 4277 hosts a short ($R_{bar}=3.2_{-0.6}^{+0.9}$ kpc), weak ($S_{bar}=0.21\pm 0.02$), and slow ($R=1.8_{-0.3}^{+0.5}$) bar and its pattern speed (${\Omega }_{bar}=24.7\pm 3.4$ km s${}^{-1}$ kpc${}^{-1}$) is amongst the best-constrained ones ever obtained with the Tremaine-Weinberg (TW) method with relative statistical errors of $\sim 0.2$. Conclusions: NGC 4277 is the first clear-cut case of a galaxy hosting a slow stellar bar ($R>1.4$ at more than a 1$\sigma$ confidence level) measured with the model-independent TW method. A possible interaction with the neighbour galaxy NGC 4273 could have triggered the formation of such a slow bar and/or the bar could be slowed down due to the dynamical friction with a significant amount of dark matter within the bar region.

Accepted for publication on A&A, 10 pages

References in corpus (14)

• Overview of the SDSS-IV MaNGA Survey: Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory
• A Classical Morphological Analysis of Galaxies in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G)
• The population of barred galaxies in the local universe I. Detection and characterisation of bars
• The Extended Virgo Cluster Catalog
• Two-dimensional multi-component photometric decomposition of CALIFA galaxies
• Model-based pattern speed estimates for 38 barred galaxies
• A numerical study of interactions and stellar bars
• The Potential-Density Phase Shift Method for Determining the Corotation Radii in Spiral and Barred Galaxies
• NIBLES - an HI census of stellar mass selected SDSS galaxies: I. The Nançay HI survey
• Stellar populations in the bulges of isolated galaxies
• A slow bar in a dark matter dominated galaxy
• Bar pattern speeds in CALIFA galaxies III. Solving the puzzle of ultrafast bars
• Evidence of a fast bar in the weakly-interacting galaxy NGC 4264 with MUSE
• A slow lopsided bar in the interacting dwarf galaxy IC 3167

Cited by in corpus (7)

• A Milky Way-like barred spiral galaxy at a redshift of 3
• The bar rotation rate as a diagnostic of dark matter content in the centre of disc galaxies
• Tidal interaction can stop galactic bars: on the LMC non-rotating bar
• On the Tremaine-Weinberg method: how much can we trust gas tracers to measure pattern speeds?
• The Tremaine-Weinberg method at high redshifts
• Search for Slow Bars in Two Barred Galaxies with Nuclear Structures: NGC 6951 and NGC 7716
• The dynamical state of bars in cluster dwarf galaxies: The cases of NGC 4483 and NGC 4516