Galaxy triplet SIT 45 inspected in detail

Tomasz Nowakowski is a member of the physics.org community.

An international team of astronomy has observed a triplet of stars. The results of the study were published on arXiv.org.

The formation and evolution of small and large systems of galaxies can be studied with the help of galaxy triplets. It's important to detect new ones and investigate them in detail because they aren't common in the local universe.

There is an unusual isolated triplet consisting of three merging late-type galaxies. It is expected to show complex dynamics and star formation history.

A group of researchers led by Diana Grajales- Medina of the Valencian International University in Spain studied the evolution of SIT 45 through its dynamic properties and configuration. The data from various surveys were analyzed for this purpose.

We studied the parameters of the isolated merging galaxy triplet. There are three interacting late-type galaxies in the interacting system. It's an ideal candidate for investigating the triggering of star formation due to interaction.

One of the most compact triplets in the SIT database is SIT 45, which is a highly isolated system with a large scale environment. It is one of the highest values in the catalog.

The team discovered that the system has an ongoing star-formation with one of the galaxies, designated SIT 45C. The recent star formation increase in the three galaxies is thought to have been caused by the merging process.

The results show that SIT 45 is highly evolved and that its crossing time values are much smaller than the others. A dark matter halo may be embedded in the blue spirals that make up SIT 45.

The hypotheses proposed by the researchers are the most plausible.

There are two scenarios for the current configuration of the triplet, one where one of the members is a tidal galaxy, and the other where this galaxy arrives to the system after an interaction. The authors concluded that both scenarios needed further exploration.

More information: SIT 45: An interacting, compact, and star-forming isolated galaxy triplet, arXiv:2209.12850 [astro-ph.GA] arxiv.org/abs/2209.12850

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