Simulating Jellyfish Tails
Some disk galaxies in clusters appear to be actively losing their gas, with long one-sided tails of gas, believed to be the result of a process known as ram pressure stripping. In some cases active star formation can be seen to occur outside the galaxy disk, in star-forming regions arranged along the stream of gas - such galaxies are known as jellyfish galaxies, due to their resemblance to real jellyfish. We conduct modelling of such galaxies, both the morphology of their disks, and the behaviour of their star-forming regions, for comparison with observed Jellyfish galaxies in the GASP survey. We also conduct modelling the formation and destruction of CO emitting gas in spiral galaxies undergoing ram pressure for comparison with the VERTICO survey data.
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A Jellyfish galaxy from the GASP survey (Poggianti et al. 2017). The long one-sided stream forms the tentacles of the Jellyfish, while the galaxy disk is the Jellyfish head. Small blobs within the stream indicate the presence of star-forming regions. They appear to be happily forming stars, even at large distances beyond the disk of the galaxy.
