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Main Authors: Arabsalmani, Maryam, Roychowdhury, Sambit, Schneider, Benjamin, Springel, Volker, Floc'h, Emeric Le, Bournaud, Frederic, Burkert, Andreas, Cuillandre, Jean-Charles, Duc, Pierre-Alain, Emsellem, Eric, Galárraga-Espinosa, Daniela, Pian, Elena, Renaud, Florent, Zwaan, Martin A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.01727
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author Arabsalmani, Maryam
Roychowdhury, Sambit
Schneider, Benjamin
Springel, Volker
Floc'h, Emeric Le
Bournaud, Frederic
Burkert, Andreas
Cuillandre, Jean-Charles
Duc, Pierre-Alain
Emsellem, Eric
Galárraga-Espinosa, Daniela
Pian, Elena
Renaud, Florent
Zwaan, Martin A.
author_facet Arabsalmani, Maryam
Roychowdhury, Sambit
Schneider, Benjamin
Springel, Volker
Floc'h, Emeric Le
Bournaud, Frederic
Burkert, Andreas
Cuillandre, Jean-Charles
Duc, Pierre-Alain
Emsellem, Eric
Galárraga-Espinosa, Daniela
Pian, Elena
Renaud, Florent
Zwaan, Martin A.
contents We identify a chain of galaxies along an almost straight line in the nearby Universe with a projected length of ~5 Mpc. The galaxies are distributed within projected distances of only 7-105 kpc from the axis of the identified filament. They have redshifts in a very small range of z=0.0361-0.0370 so that their radial velocities are consistent with galaxy proper motions. The filament galaxies are mainly star-forming and have stellar masses in a range of $\rm 10^{9.1}-10^{10.7}\,M_{\odot}$. We search for systems with similar geometrical properties in the full-sky mock galaxy catalogue of the MillenniumTNG simulations and find that although such straight filaments are unusual and rare, they are predicted by $Λ$CDM simulations (4% incidence). We study the cold HI gas in a 1.3 Mpc section of the filament through HI-21cm emission line observations and detect eleven HI sources, many more than expected from the HI mass function in a similar volume. They have HI masses $\rm 10^{8.5}-10^{9.5}\,M_{\odot}$ and are mostly within ~120 kpc projected distance from the filament axis. None of these HI sources has a confirmed optical counterpart. Their darkness together with their large HI-21cm line-widths indicate that they contain gas that might not yet be virialized. These clouds must be marking the peaks of the dark matter and HI distributions over large scales within the filament. The presence of such gas clouds around the filament spines is predicted by simulations, but this is the first time that the existence of such clouds in a filament is observationally confirmed.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_01727
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Pearls on a string: Dark and bright galaxies on a strikingly straight and narrow filament
Arabsalmani, Maryam
Roychowdhury, Sambit
Schneider, Benjamin
Springel, Volker
Floc'h, Emeric Le
Bournaud, Frederic
Burkert, Andreas
Cuillandre, Jean-Charles
Duc, Pierre-Alain
Emsellem, Eric
Galárraga-Espinosa, Daniela
Pian, Elena
Renaud, Florent
Zwaan, Martin A.
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
We identify a chain of galaxies along an almost straight line in the nearby Universe with a projected length of ~5 Mpc. The galaxies are distributed within projected distances of only 7-105 kpc from the axis of the identified filament. They have redshifts in a very small range of z=0.0361-0.0370 so that their radial velocities are consistent with galaxy proper motions. The filament galaxies are mainly star-forming and have stellar masses in a range of $\rm 10^{9.1}-10^{10.7}\,M_{\odot}$. We search for systems with similar geometrical properties in the full-sky mock galaxy catalogue of the MillenniumTNG simulations and find that although such straight filaments are unusual and rare, they are predicted by $Λ$CDM simulations (4% incidence). We study the cold HI gas in a 1.3 Mpc section of the filament through HI-21cm emission line observations and detect eleven HI sources, many more than expected from the HI mass function in a similar volume. They have HI masses $\rm 10^{8.5}-10^{9.5}\,M_{\odot}$ and are mostly within ~120 kpc projected distance from the filament axis. None of these HI sources has a confirmed optical counterpart. Their darkness together with their large HI-21cm line-widths indicate that they contain gas that might not yet be virialized. These clouds must be marking the peaks of the dark matter and HI distributions over large scales within the filament. The presence of such gas clouds around the filament spines is predicted by simulations, but this is the first time that the existence of such clouds in a filament is observationally confirmed.
title Pearls on a string: Dark and bright galaxies on a strikingly straight and narrow filament
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.01727