Authors
Fogarty, Lisa M. R.; Bland-Hawthorn, Joss; Croom, Scott M.; Green, Andrew W.; Bryant, Julia J.; Lawrence, Jon S.; Richards, Samuel; Allen, James T.; Bauer, Amanda E.; Birchall, Michael N.; Brough, Sarah; Colless, Matthew; Ellis, Simon C.; Farrell, Tony; Goodwin, Michael; Heald, Ron; Hopkins, Andrew M.; Horton, Anthony; Jones, D. Heath; Lee, Steve; Lewis, Geraint; López-Sánchez, Ángel R.; Miziarski, Stan; Trowland, Holly; Leon-Saval, Sergio G.; Min, Seong-Sik; Trinh, Christopher; Cecil, Gerald; Veilleux, Sylvain; Kreimeyer, Kory
Abstract
We present the first scientific results from the Sydney-AAO Multi-Object IFS (SAMI) at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. This unique instrument deploys 13 fused fiber bundles (hexabundles) across a one-degree field of view allowing simultaneous spatially resolved spectroscopy of 13 galaxies. During the first SAMI commissioning run, targeting a single galaxy field, one object (ESO 185-G031) was found to have extended minor axis emission with ionization and kinematic properties consistent with a large-scale galactic wind. The importance of this result is twofold: (1) fiber bundle spectrographs are able to identify low surface brightness emission arising from extranuclear activity and (2) such activity may be more common than presently assumed because conventional multi-object spectrographs use single-aperture fibers and spectra from these are nearly always dominated by nuclear emission. These early results demonstrate the extraordinary potential of multi-object hexabundle spectroscopy in future galaxy surveys.
