DARK MATTER AND DYNAMICS IN HERCULES CLUSTER

Abstract

We present new 21-cm observations of faint (15.7<mpg<16.5) spiral galaxies in the Abell cluster 2151. These results, when combined with the large body of velocities available in the literature for Hercules, permit us to study the dynamics throughout the cluster core, out to a projected radius of 1.8h−1 Mpc. We calculate the global dynamical mass of Hercules using 3 different but related methods: two versions of the virial theorem and the projected mass estimator. These masses lie in the range 3–6×1014 M⊙. We investigate the importance of subclustering in A2151 using the statistical test of Dressler and Shectman1 and the effects of the detected substructure on the dynamical mass determination. The clumpy distribution of galaxies is interpreted as a sign that the galaxies in the cluster have not reached dynamical equilibrium in the gravitational potential, which means that dynamical mass estimates are prone to significant errors. In spite of this uncertainty, we estimate that the virial theorem errors due to the presence of substructure are not larger than 30% in A2151. Finally, we use the 21-cm linewidths to estimate the minimum total mass in the cluster which is contained within the HI radii of the cluster galaxies is about 3×1014 M⊙. This number may be compared with the dynamical mass and used to separate the contribution of dark matter inside and outside the HI envelopes of galaxies, and the fraction of DM which cannot be associated with individual galaxies, about 90–95%.