Smoke in the "Smoke Rings'': ISO Observations of Dust in Collisional Ring Galaxies
Abstract
Collisional ring galaxies probably result from a head-on collision between a compact companion galaxy and a gas-rich disk system. We present a review of the discovery of warm dust in five collisional rings observed by ISO which range in total Far-IR luminosity from 1010 < LFIR < 1011 L. The results show that in most cases, the mid-IR (MIR) flux is often a significant fraction of the total energy budget of star formation activity in these galaxies (at least 10% even in the least powerful cases). We argue that the MIR emission, when combined with optical and radio observations, allows us to build a more complete picture of activity in these collisional systems. Although not as extreme as ULIRGs, these collisional systems provide low-redshift examples of the early effects of galaxy collisions on the ISM and may be relevant to the collisional assembly of galaxy disk components at high redshift.
- Publication:
-
ISO Survey of a Dusty Universe
- Pub Date:
- 2000
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.astro-ph/9912210
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/9912210
- Bibcode:
- 2000LNP...548..232A
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 8 pages, 5 figures, to be published in the proceedings of ``ISO Surveys of a Dusty Universe'', Ringberg, Germany, November 8-12, 1999