The X-ray halos of the most MASSIVE galaxies in the Universe
Abstract
Despite decades of research, the assembly history and evolution of the most massive elliptical galaxies in the Universe remains mysterious. The physical properties (gas temperatures, halo masses, stellar kinematics etc.) of local elliptical galaxies are now being probed in depth by studies such as Atlas3D. However, due to their limited volume, these studies still do not include the most massive galaxies. Here I will present our investigation of the X-ray and optical properties of a complete sample of M > 1011 M⊙ sources within the MASSIVE Galaxy Survey (Ma et al. 2014), extending the previous Atlas3D analyses by an order of magnitude in K-band luminosity. We harness the exquisite spatial resolution and sensitivity of the Chandra X-ray observatory, combined with integral field optical spectroscopy, to provide the most complete and unbiased picture, to date, for the effect of large and small scale environment on the evolution of elliptical galaxies.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #227
- Pub Date:
- January 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AAS...22730104G