Submitted on July 15, 2003
Accepted on July 23, 2003
Galaxy Disruption in a Halo of Dark Matter
Duncan A. Forbes 1*,
Michael A. Beasley 1,
Kenji Bekki 2,
Jean P. Brodie 3,
Jay Strader 3
1 Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, PO Box 218, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia.
2 School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia.
3 Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dforbes{at}swin.edu.au.
The relics of disrupted satellite galaxies around the Milky Way and Andromeda have been found, but direct evidence of a satellite galaxy in the early stages of being disrupted has remained elusive. We have discovered a dwarf satellite galaxy in the process of being torn apart by gravitational tidal forces as it merges with a larger galaxy's dark matter halo. Our results illustrate the morphological transformation of dwarf galaxies by tidal interaction and the continued build-up of galaxy halos.
