GBT22B-065

Hunting for Massive Low Surface Brightness Galaxies

Abstract

Although Low Surface Brightness (LSB) galaxies - objects with a central surface brightness at least one magnitude/sq. arcsec fainter than the night sky - are increasing well studied, considerable uncertainty still exists as to both the LSB galaxy properties and evolutionary history. A subset of LSB galaxies are massive LSB galaxies - objects with extremely diffuse, often very blue disks, high dynamical and gas masses, an typically very high mass-to-luminosity ratios. These objects provide a fascinating extreme in galaxy formation and evolution and are excellent tests of galaxy formation and evolution theories. To explore the number density and properties of massive LSB galaxies in the nearby Universe, we have undertaken a program to re-examine catalogued LSB galaxies without known gas properties. The first part of this program used the GBT, Nancay, and Arecibo telescopes to look at late-type LSB galaxies in the UGC and near-infrared LSB galaxies in the 2MASS catalog. All of these objects have been observed with at least one telescope with high detection rates. Here we propose to use the GBT to complete this survey, providing confirmation for a number of our detections and deeper follow-ups to the non-detections in our survey.

Investigators

Name	Institution
Karen O'Neil *	Green Bank Observatory
Wim van Driel	Paris, Observatoire de
Stephen Schneider	Massachusetts at Amherst, University of

* indicates the PI