An AstroSat/UVIT study of galaxies in the cluster Abell 2199

Abstract

We present the newly acquired data for an AstroSat/UVIT field centred on a face-on spiral starburst galaxy UGC 10420, located in the X-ray bright cluster Abell 2199 (z = 0.031). We have analysed the FUV BaF2 data for this field along with the archival FUV and NUV data from the GALEX mission, optical photometric data from the SDSS, spectroscopic data from the literature, and low-frequency radio data from the LoTSS survey, respectively. The stars were separated from the galaxies using the SDSS photometric pipeline classification, while the spectroscopic redshifts available for 35% of the detected UVIT sources were used to identify member galaxies of the cluster Abell 2199. We find that (a) the non-cluster galaxies are on average fainter than the cluster galaxies at fixed magnitude, (b) stars and galaxies are indistinguishable in the r vs. NUV–r plane, and (c) bright stars are ∼ 1.5 mag bluer than the galaxies in the FUV–r vs. NUV–r colour-colour plane. Besides UGC 10420 which is the only known cluster galaxy with an extended-UV disk, we identify five more galaxies with asymmetric FUV morphology and extended radio emission in this field. All the asymmetric member galaxies of Abell 2199, lie within the virial boundaries of the cluster. This observation, together with the fact that these asymmetric cluster galaxies have low-frequency radio tails or FUV emission pointing away from the cluster centre leads us to hypothesise that these galaxies are likely undergoing ram-pressure stripping (RPS) under the influence of cluster-environment related mechanisms. A comparison of optical and FUV star formation rate of UVIT detected galaxies shows enhanced star formation in half of the RPS candidates, suggesting that environment-related mechanisms may lead to a burst of star formation in RPS galaxies.Our analysis indicates the presence of at least two more groups or clusters at z ∼ 0.077 and 0.260, coincident with Abell 2199 along the line of sight of the field of view studied here.