The Cen A galaxy group: Dynamical mass and missing baryons

Abstract

The nearby elliptical galaxy Centaurus A (Cen A) is surrounded by a flattened system of dwarf satellite galaxies with coherent motions. Using a novel Bayesian approach, we measured the mean rotation velocity vrot and velocity dispersion σint of the satellite system. We found vrot/σint ≃ 0.7, indicating that the satellite system has non-negligible rotational support. Using Jeans’ equations, we measured a circular velocity of 258 km s−1 and a dynamical mass of 1.2 × 1013 M⊙ within 800 kpc. In a Λ cold dark matter cosmological context, we found that the Cen A group has a baryon fraction Mb/M200 ≃ 0.035 and is missing ∼77% of the cosmologically available baryons. Consequently, Cen A should have a hot intergalactic medium with a mass of ∼8 × 1011 M⊙, which is more than ∼20 times larger than current X-ray estimates. Intriguingly, the whole Cen A group lies on the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation defined by individual rotationally supported galaxies, as expected in Milgromian dynamics (MOND) with no need of missing baryons.