High resolution H i imaging of VIRGOHI 21 - a dark galaxy in the Virgo Cluster

Minchin, R. F., Davies, Jonathan Ivor, Disney, Michael John, Marble, A. R., Impey, C. D., Boyce, P. J., Garcia, D. A., Grossi, Marco, Jordan, C. A., Lang, Robert Hugh, Roberts, Sarah, Sabatini, Sabina ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2076-5767 and van Driel, W. 2006. High resolution H i imaging of VIRGOHI 21 - a dark galaxy in the Virgo Cluster. Presented at: 207th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Washington, DC, USA, 8-12 January 2006.

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Abstract

Dark Matter supposedly dominates the extragalactic Universe, yet no totally dark structure of galactic proportions has ever been convincingly identified. Minchin et al. (2005) suggested that VIRGOHI 21, a 21-cm source found in the Virgo Cluster by Davies et al. (2004), was probably such a dark galaxy because of its broad line-width ( ˜ 200 km s-1) unaccompanied by any visible massive object to account for it. We have now imaged VIRGOHI 21 in the neutral hydrogen line, and indeed we find what appears to be a dark, edge-on, spinning disk with the mass and diameter of a typical spiral galaxy. We also find that there is an indubitable interaction with NGC 4254, a luminous spiral with an odd one-armed morphology but lacking the massive interactor normally linked with such a feature. Published numerical models of NGC 4254 call for a close interaction ˜ 10(8) years ago with a perturber of ˜ 10(11) M(sun). This we take as further, independent evidence for the massive nature of VIRGOHI 21.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item - published (Poster)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Physics and Astronomy
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy
Related URLs:	Organisation
Last Modified:	05 Aug 2026 02:17
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/36135

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