Hunting for low-surface brightness features in nearby galaxy groups

Oliver Müller

Published 2019-09-20Version 1

On the scale of dwarf galaxies, several tensions between observations and the theory of structure formation have been identified in the Local Group of galaxies. One of them, the plane-of-satellite problem describes the distribution and motion of dwarf galaxies around their hosts being planar and co-moving. To extend these studies, we have surveyed the nearby Centaurus group and found again evidence for co-rotation within a planar structure of dwarf galaxies, posing a challenge to the current LambdaCDM paradigm. To further study the distribution of satellite systems around other galaxy groups, we have tested MTO - a program to detect astronomical sources - and found that it works well in combination with surface brightness fluctuation distance measurements to get a complete sample of dwarf galaxies. Such an approach will improve the census of dwarf galaxies in nearby galaxy groups, bringing the study of the small-scale problems to a solid statistical foundation.