Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): fine filaments of galaxies detected within voids

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Alpaslan, Mehmet, Robotham, Aaron S G, Obreschkow, Danail, Penny, Samantha, Driver, Simon, Norberg, Peder, Brough, Sarah, Brown, Michael, Cluver, Michelle, Holwerda, Benne, Hopkins, Andrew M, van Kampen, Eelco, Kelvin, Lee S, Lara-Lopez, Maritza A, Liske, Jochen, Loveday, Jon, Mahajan, Smriti and Pimbblet, Kevin (2014) Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): fine filaments of galaxies detected within voids. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, 440 (1). L106-L110. ISSN 1745-3925

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Abstract

Based on data from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey, we report on the discovery of structures that we refer to as ‘tendrils’ of galaxies: coherent, thin chains of galaxies that are rooted in filaments and terminate in neighbouring filaments or voids. On average, tendrils contain six galaxies and span 10 h−1 Mpc. We use the so-called line correlation function to prove that tendrils represent real structures rather than accidental alignments. We show that voids found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, 7th data release survey that overlap with GAMA regions contain a large number of galaxies, primarily belonging to tendrils. This implies that void sizes are strongly dependent on the number density and sensitivity limits of a survey. We caution that galaxies in low-density regions, which may be defined as ‘void galaxies,’ will have local galaxy number densities that depend on such observational limits and are likely higher than those can be directly measured.

Item Type: Article
Schools and Departments: School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences > Physics and Astronomy
Subjects: Q Science > QB Astronomy
Depositing User: Jonathan Loveday
Date Deposited: 24 Jun 2015 15:38
Last Modified: 08 Mar 2017 20:36
URI: http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/54683

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