The Remarkable 60 x 2 kpc Optical Filament Associated with a Poststarburst Galaxy in Coma Cluster

Abstract

In the deep narrow band image of the Coma Cluster taken with Suprime-Cam of the Subaru telescope, we found an extremely long and narrow (~ 60 kpc x 2 kpc) Halpha emitting region associated with a poststarburst galaxy (D100). Follow up spectroscopy shows that the region has the same redshift as D100. The surface brightness of the region is typically 25 mag(AB) arcsec^-2 in Halpha, which corresponds to 0.5--4x10^-17 erg s^-1 cm^-2 arcsec^-2. We set two possible explanations for the origin of the region; gas stripped off from a merged dwarf, or gas stripped off from D100 by ram pressure. Either scenario has difficulty to fully explain all the observed characteristics of the region.

6 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ