On-going Research: An Imaging Survey of Tidal Tails

John Hibbard, NRAO

Preliminary results of an R- and K-band imaging survey of UGC systems with tidal tails, plumes, shells, bridges, etc.

The goal of this survey is to image a representative sample of nearby peculiars (~150 galaxies) in R- and K-bands to be used to define a "morphological parameter space" for peculiars (tail lengths, luminosities, etc. as a function of mass ratio, separation, etc.). The local sample is drawn from a large optically defined sample of ~600 peculiars chosen from the UGC. A subset of ~75 of these will additionally be imaged in UBV. These data will be used to:

• Determine if IR luminous galaxies fall within a more restricted region of this parameter space then less IR luminous systems
• Determine if intermediate redshift peculiar galaxies (z~0.5-1.3) are similar to their local analogs.

Results of Quirc Runs

• not here

Results of Optical Runs

• Mosaic of 95Jan24 run R-band
• Mosaic of 95Jan25 run R-band
• Mosaic of 95Jun03 run R-band
• Mosaic of 95Jun04 run R-band
• 95Nov25 H-alpha
• 96Nov18 B+V-bands
• 96Nov19 R-bands (not here)
• 97Jan06 B+V-bands
• 97Jan07 B+V-bands
• Mosaic of 97Jan08 run R-band
• 97Apr09 B+V-bands

BVR-band imaging with UH 88" Tek2048 600-900sec exposures, f/10 giving 0.22"/pix unbinned and 7.5' FOV. K'-band with UH 88" QUIRC 1024 CCD, 360sec exposures, f/10 giving 0.183"/pix unbinned and 3' FOV. U-band are 1200s from Steward 90" (C. Liu) or 1800s from Palomar 60" (L. Armus).
Gifs of individual objects and permission to reproduce are available upon request (email jhibbard @ nrao.edu). Please do not ask for the fits files, unless you would like to collaborate. Data will be made publically available via NED once above projects are completed.