Discovery of a near-infrared bar and a pseudobulge in the collisional ring galaxy Cartwheel

Abstract

We report the discovery of a bar, a pseudobulge and unresolved point source in the archetype collisional ring galaxy Cartwheel using careful morphological analysis of a near-infrared (NIR) K$_s$ band image of excellent quality (seeing=0.42\arcsec) at the ESO archive. The bar is oval-shaped with a semi-major axis length of 3.23\arcsec\($\sim$2.09~kpc), with almost a flat light distribution along it. The bulge is almost round (ellipticity=0.21) with an effective radius of 1.62\arcsec\ ($\sim$1.05~kpc) and a Sersic index of 0.99, parameters typical of pseudobulges in late-type galaxies. The newly discovered bar is not recognisable as such in the optical images even with more than a factor of two higher spatial resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope, due to a combination of its red colour and the presence of dusty features. The observed bar and pseudobulge most likely belonged to the pre-collisional progenitor of the Cartwheel. The discovery of a bar in an archetype collisional ring galaxy Cartwheel is the first observational evidence to confirm the prediction that bars can survive a drop-through collision along with the morphological structures like a central bulge (pseudo).