A&A 396, 73–81 (2002) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20021333 & c ESO 2002 Astrophysics A 60 pc counter-rotating core in NGC 4621 F. Wernli1, E. Emsellem1, and Y. Copin2 1 Centre de Recherche Astronomique de Lyon, 9 Av. Charles Andr´e, 69561 Saint-Genis Laval Cedex, France 2 Institut de physique nucl´eaire de Lyon, 4 rue Enrico Fermi, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France Received 28 March 2002 / Accepted 10 September 2002 Abstract. We present adaptive optics assisted OASIS integral field spectrography of the S0 galaxy NGC 4621. Two-dimensional stellar kinematical maps (mean velocity and dispersion) reveal the presence of a ∼60 pc diameter counter-rotating core (CRC), the smallest observed to date. The OASIS data also suggests that the kinematic center of the CRC is slightly offset from the center of the outer isophotes. This seems to be confirmed by archival HST/STIS data. We also present the HST/WFPC2 V − I colour map, which exhibits a central elongated red structure, also slightly off-centered in the same direction as the kinematic centre. We then construct an axisymmetric model of NGC 4621: the two-integral distribution function is derived using the Multi-Gaussian Expansion and the Hunter & Qian (1993) formalisms. Although the stellar velocities are reasonably fitted, including the region of the counter-rotating core, significant discrepancies between the model and the observations demonstrate the need for a more general model (e.g. a three-integral model). Key words. galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cD – galaxies: evolution – galaxies: individual: NGC 4621 – galaxies: formation – galaxies: kinematics and dynamics – galaxies: nuclei 1. Introduction Recent studies (e.g. Verolme et al. 2002) show that state-of- the-art models combined with two-dimensional integral-field The fact that early-type galaxies are not necessarily oblate spectroscopic data are required to constrain precisely the global major-axis rotators has been well known since the end of physical parameters of early-type galaxies, such as the incli- the 1970s. The number of objects showing significant minor- nation angle or the mass-to-light ratio, as well as the central axis rotation attained ten in 1988 (Wagner et al. 1988), and characteristics for objects exhibiting features such as kinemati- some of these objects later showed evidence for kinemat- cally decoupled cores (e.g. the core mass of IC 1459, Cappellari ically decoupled core structures (NGC 4365, NGC 4406: et al. 2002). Moreover, integral-field spectroscopy also pro- ff Bender 1988; NGC 4589: Moellenho & Bender 1989; vides access to line-strength maps: the detailed kinematic in- NGC 5982: Wagner 1990). The most cited formation scenario formation can thus be coupled to the line indices in order to for such structures is the hierarchical model, which involves more easily disentangle the core from the host galaxy (Davies single or multiple merging steps (see e.g. Cole et al. 1994 et al. 2001). and references therein). Observations of kinematically decou- The SAURON survey (Bacon et al. 2001a; de Zeeuw pled cores can therefore be used to constrain the merger tree of et al. 2002) was carried out in order to study the integral galaxies. However the total fraction of early-type galaxies con- field kinematics of a sample of 72 early-type galaxies over a taining such a core is poorly known (de Zeeuw & Franx 1991). wide field of view (>33 × 41). In parallel, to obtain com- Such cores are generally revealed using long-slit measurements plementary high spatial resolution data, we designed a pro- FWHM with 1 or worse spatial resolution: this introduces gram to observe their central parts (∼5 × 5 ) with the inte- an a priori assumption on the geometry of the central struc- gral field spectrograph OASIS (Bacon et al. 2000). The aim tures, and prevents the detection of cores with small apparent is to probe the central spatial morphology and dynamics of sizes. Finally, the rough characteristics of these cores (fraction a subset of galaxies in the SAURON sample, in order to link in mass, relative age and metallicity) remain very uncertain, as them with the global properties of the host galaxies provided very few studies exist and are often limited to morphological by SAURON and other wide field studies. The additional use of data (see Carollo et al. 1997 for 15 KDCs). PUEO (Rigaut et al. 1998), the Canada France Hawaii Telescope Send offprint requests to: F. Wernli, AO bonnette, with OASIS allows us to reach resolutions of . ∼ e-mail: [email protected] about 0 25 ( 12 pc at 10 Mpc) in the red part of the visible Based on observations collected at Canada-France-Hawaii when bright guiding sources are available. Telescope, which is operated by CNRS of France, NRC of Canada, NGC 4621, an S0 galaxy (Lauer et al. 1995), with and the University of Hawaii. MV = 9.6, located in the Virgo cluster (D = 18.3 Mpc, Article published by EDP Sciences and available at http://www.aanda.org or http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20021333 74 F. Wernli et al.: A 60 pc counter-rotating core in NGC 4621 Tonry et al. 2001), is the first target of the subsample that higher order moments, due to the rather low signal to noise was observed with OASIS/PUEO. Its steep power-law central ratio (even after the convolution performed on the datacube). luminosity profile (γ = 2.03, Gebhardt et al. 1996) is ideally The error bars on the velocity and dispersion measurements adapted to serve as a guiding source for the AO. NGC 4621 were computed via a Monte-Carlo algorithm using the mea- is close to edge-on, and its innermost 6 isodensities reveal a sured S/N (see Copin 2000, Ph.D. Thesis). nuclear disk (Sil’Chenko et al. 1997). In this paper, we present the first results of our OASIS observations of NGC 4621, with the discovery of the small- 2.2. Ancillary data est counter-rotating stellar core observed to date. The scale 2.2.1. Photometry of the core is 60 pc, while the previously detected cores have an average radius of around 1 kpc (see the sample of Carollo In order to obtain an accurate three-dimensional mass model ff et al. 1997). Detailed information on the di erent data sets used of the galaxy we need both wide-field and high-resolution pho- / in this work, including HST WFPC2 and STIS observations, tometry to probe the visible mass up to large radii and to cor- are provided in Sect. 2. The corresponding measured photom- rectly sample the central structure (the cusp). We used a 20 etry and stellar kinematics are presented in Sect. 3. We com- V band image of the galaxy taken at the OHP 2 m Telescope, puted a two-integral distribution function (DF) model of the kindly provided by R. Michard (Idiart et al. 2002). The cen- galaxy, which is presented in Sect. 4. The discussion is carried tral regions were examined with the help of WFPC2/HST out in Sect. 5. data3 retrieved from the archive (F555W and F814W filters, Faber et al. 1997, #5512). For both bands, three unsaturated 2. Observational data sets frames were merged and cosmic ray-corrected (330 s and 230 s exposure time for F555W and F814W filters respectively). We 2.1. OASIS data performed photometric calibration using the VEGAMAG stan- dard, and used the PSFs computed using tinytim4.Wead- 2.1.1. Observations justed the levels of the OHP image to the F555W frame taking Ca-triplet OASIS exposures of NGC 4621 were obtained in into account the different spectral domains and the PSF. January 2000 using the medium spectral configuration (MR3: 8346–9152 Å) at the f/20 (PUEO) focus of the CFHT, and 2.2.2. Long-slit kinematics a spatial sampling of 0. 16. Eight out of ten 30 min exposures 1 were fully reduced using the dedicated XOasis package ,and We used long slit data from Bender et al. (1994, hereafter merged into a single frame (two frames were discarded due to BSG94; data kindly provided by R. Bender) in order to com- bad seeing conditions and associated loss of guiding). The re- plement the OASIS data up to large radii: major and minor 2 × × 2 sulting 3D dataset probes about 4 4 (300 300 pc ), with axis velocity and dispersion measurements are available in- σ = −1 a resolution of 70 km s . We modeled the PSF of the side 40 (3.5 kpc), with a seeing of ∼1. 8 FWHM (other kine- merged datacube using the sum of two concentric Gaussians: matical – and line-strength – measurements were published by their parameters were retrieved (via a least-square procedure) Sil’chenko 1997, but with a lower spatial resolution). by comparison with the WFPC2/HST F814W frame as in We finally reduced unpublished HST/STIS major-axis Bacon et al. (2001b). The resulting FWHM of the merged dat- data (Green, ID #8018; G750M grating, Ca-Triplet) in or- acube is 0. 51. der to examine the central kinematics of NGC 4621 at high The total S/N (summed over the bandwidth) drops very spatial resolution. Two exposures with a total of 72 min quickly towards the outer parts, as it is 65 at the center, 20 were available. The calibrated data were retrieved via the at 1 and10at2 on the major-axis. We thus convolved the STScI data archival system (calstis pipeline). Appropriate datacube with a Gaussian of variable width in order to obtain a flat field exposures were retrieved to correct for the fring- higher S/N over the field (see Fig.