Understanding the molecular outflow in NGC 1266

Title: Discovery of an AGN-Driven Molecular Outflow in the Local Early-Type Galaxy NGC 1266
Authors: Katherine Alatalo, Leo Blitz, Lisa M. Young, Timothy A. Davis, Martin Bureau, Laura A Lopez, Michele Cappellari, Nicholas Scott, Kristen L. Shapiro, Alison F. Crocker, Sergio Martin, Maxime Bois, et al.
First author’s institution: University of California, Berkeley

Today’s astrobite deals with an exciting but puzzling observation of a local galaxy, NGC 1266. These observations are exciting because they go against the standard lore of how galaxies form. This particular galaxy has been classified as an S0, a type of galaxy associated with little gas and an old stellar population. Most observers assume that S0 and elliptical galaxies are ‘red and dead’, that is, that they finished forming stars long ago and that the light we see mainly comes from older, low-mass stars that emit redder light than young, massive stars, which tend to dominate the light we see from star-forming galaxies.
Recently, however, many studies have begun to find that S0s and ellipticals exhibit a low level of star formation and actually can host a significant amount of gas. This paper is part of the ATLAS3D project, which aims to infer the atomic and ...