PI: William Keel, University of Alabama, firstname.lastname@example.org
Address: Physics Department, Box 870324, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0324, USA
CoI: Frazer Owen, National Radio Astronomy Observatory
CoI: Neal Miller, Johns Hopkins University
CoI: Daniel Wang, University of Massachussetts
Title: Signatures of stellar and gas stripping in the core of Abell 2125
Abstract: An extensive data set for the rich cluster Abell 2125 reveals several lines of evidence for recent and ongoing stripping of galaxies, involving both gas and stars, during a cluster-cluster merger. The velocity structure of this cluster allows an unusually clean set of spectroscopic tests for both the role of stripping and the details of how gas is now being stripped from one high-velocity galaxy, which already shows a history of starburst activity roughly coincident with its likely passage through the core ICM. A WIYN velocity field of the ~ 70-kpc [O II] plume from galaxy C153 will reveal whether the gas is indeed being stripped by the cluster ICM, whose radial velocity differs by 2100 km/s, stripped by more local gas within an infalling group, or whether we're unlucky and it's some kind of merger in the foreground. The same observations will be able to measure the velocity of diffuse stripped starlight near the cluster core, constraining its origin, and refine our knowledge of a UV-bright diffuse component near C153 itself, telling whether this represents \it in situ star formation within stripped gas. Existing data on stripping in clusters are sparse enough that this case alone can tell us much about how gas is driven out of galaxies in rich environments.
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