A study of galaxy interactions

Abstract

This work describes the in-depth study of two systems of interacting galaxies, namely Arp0 and VIIZw466. Both systems belong to a special group of interacting galaxies known as collisional ring and ling-like galaxies. A typical ring galaxy emerges when a companion galaxy passes through or near the center of a larger rotating disk galaxy driving ring-like waves through the disk. VIIZw466 is a classical ring galaxy. Arp10 is a fairly disturbed system with rings and shells. It exhibits a threshold dependence in the star formation rate along the rings and may be a very interesting intermediate type between a ring and a collisional shell galaxy. We performed our study by examining the morphology, star formation history and dynamics using multiwavelentgh observations. At the same time a computer code which can be used to simulate the behavior of the stellar component was developed. The code, which uses a parallel N-body thee method to solve Newton’s equations, will enable us to perform numerical experiments and simulate the dynamics of the stellar component during galaxy interactions.