The Remarkable 60 × 2 kpc Optical Filament Associated with a Poststarburst Galaxy in the Coma Cluster

In the deep narrowband image of the Coma Cluster taken with Suprime-Cam of the Subaru Telescope, we found an extremely long and narrow (~60 × 2 kpc) Hα-emitting region associated with a poststarburst galaxy (D100). Follow-up spectroscopy shows that the region has the same redshift as D100. The surface brightness of the region is typically 25 mag (AB) arcsec-2 in Hα, which corresponds to (0.5-4) × 10-17 ergs s-1 cm-2 arcsec-2. We propose two possible explanations for the origin of the region; gas stripped off from a merged dwarf or gas stripped off from D100 by ram pressure. Either scenario meets with difficulty in fully explaining all the observed characteristics of the region.

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