The rapid removal of HI from dwarf galaxies in the Fornax cluster

© A&A in press

Deep neutral hydrogen (HI) observations from the MeerKAT Fornax Survey (MFS - https://sites.google.com/inaf.it/meerkatfornaxsurvey/) has detected emission of 17 dwarf galaxies in the Fornax cluster. Only a few number of dwarfs in the cluster contain HI and and this work finds that the stellar and HI content of many HI-detected dwarfs has been recently disturbed by environmental processes.

This image shows the luminosity weighted density field and how the HI-detected dwarfs avoid the cluster centre and massive galaxies, consistent with both of these playing an active role in the removal of HI. This work has been accepted for publication in A&A, where our main finding is that dwarfs galaxies lose their HI on the order of a few hundred Myr once cluster and / or galaxy tidal and hydrodynamical forces act on the dwarfs inter stellar medium.