Tidal Streams in Newly Discovered Compact Elliptical (cE) Galaxies

Avon Huxor, Steve Phillipps, James Price, Rob Harniman

Published 2010-09-16, updated 2010-10-05Version 2

We present two newly-discovered, compact elliptical (cE) galaxies, which exhibit clear evidence of tidal steams, found in a search of SDSS DR7. The structural parameters of the cEs are derived using GALFIT and give effective radii < 400 pc. They also possess young to intermediate-age stellar populations. These two cEs provide direct evidence, a "smoking gun", for the process of tidal stripping that is believed to be the origin of M32-type galaxies. Both are found in small group environments with many late-type galaxies, suggesting that we may be seeing the formation of such galaxies in dynamically young galaxy groups.