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HST detection of spiral structure in two Coma Cluster dwarf galaxies

Alister W. Graham, Helmut Jerjen, Rafael Guzman

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/0308241

Abstract

We report the discovery of (stellar) spiral-like structure in Hubble Space Telescope images of two dwarf galaxies (GMP 3292 and GMP 3629) belonging to the Coma cluster. GMP 3629 is the faintest such galaxy detected in a cluster environment, and it is the first such galaxy observed in the dense Coma cluster. The large bulge and the faintness of the broad spiral-like pattern in GMP 3629 suggests that its disk may have been largely depleted. >We may therefore have found an example of the ``missing link'' in theories of galaxy evolution which have predicted that dwarf spiral galaxies, particularly in clusters, evolve into dwarf elliptical galaxies.

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