A MeerKAT study of a neutral hydrogen rich grouping of galaxies with megaparsec-scale filamentary-like structure
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Date
2025
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Publisher
EDP Sciences
Abstract
Context. Environmental effects within cosmological overdensities, such as galaxy groups and clusters, have been shown to impact galaxies and their cold gas reservoirs and thereby provide constraints on galaxy evolution models. Galaxy groups foster frequent galaxy-galaxy interactions, making them rich environments in which to study galaxy transformation. Aims. In this work, we study a serendipitously discovered large overdensity of neutral hydrogen (H I) galaxies at z ∼ 0.04. The galaxies appear to lie in a filamentary-like structure of megaparsec scale. Using MeerKAT’s angular resolution and field of view, we were able to spatially resolve the H I galaxies while simultaneously probing large-scale structure. Methods. The H I and sub-arcsec Dark Energy Survey (DES) imaging have revealed a large number of both interacting and disturbed galaxies in this collective group. MeerKAT data enabled us to derive H I masses and investigate interacting galaxies. We used DES and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) data to quantify the star formation rates, stellar masses, and stellar morphologies of member galaxies and compared these with field scaling relations. To place this discovery and the environmental effects in context, we used the SIMBA cosmological hydrodynamical simulation to investigate the prevalence of qualitatively similar H I overdensities and their large-scale morphological properties. This enabled us to make a prediction of how frequently such structures might be serendipitously discovered with MeerKAT and SKA-Mid H I observations in comparable observation time.
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Keywords
Galaxies: Evolution, Galaxies: Formation, Galaxies: Groups: General, Galaxies: Interactions, Large-Scale Structure of Universe
Citation
Lawrie, G.D., Deane, R.P. and Davé, R., 2025. A MeerKAT study of a neutral hydrogen rich grouping of galaxies with megaparsec-scale filamentary-like structure. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 701, p.A86.