Scientific Seminars

Evolution of Galaxies in Clusters

Gerhard Hensler
Institute of Astronomy, University of Vienna, Austria

2009-11-18    14:00    Brera - Cupola Fiore

From our present-day understanding, the evolution of galaxies is intimately connected to their environment. From observations it is manifested that galaxies in clusters and in the field evolve differently and show different morphological signatures. Since galaxy clusters still today accumulate gas and galaxies from their surroundings, those galaxies falling into the cluster gravitational potential and passing through the intracluster gas experience the cluster environment on their evolutionary path. Reasonably, these galaxies are observable within the clusters during the processes in action which affect their morphologies and lead to morphological transformation. Since ram-pressure stripping, harassment, merging, and some more processes, must have taken place since the beginning of cluster formation, the question arises to what extent such transformation processes remain preserved by morphological imprints to the galaxies' properties. Making the interpretations more complex, infalling galaxies can either leave the galaxy cluster again or can become bound to the cluster potential. A variety of effects are expected, but, interestingly, are hard to be disentangled observationally. Therefore, the physics of the transformation processes and the subsequent evolution have to be enlighted with respect to the observations, e.g. of HI-deficient galaxies, dwarf ellipticals, and possible tidal-tail dwarf galaxies. This presentation focusses on Virgo Cluster observations and compares critically the implications of galaxy interaction processes with their environment for our understanding of galactic evolution.