An ultra-compact dwarf around the Sombrero galaxy (M104): the nearest massive UCD
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract We report the discovery of an ultra-compact dwarf (UCD) associated with the Sombrero galaxy (M104). This is the closest massive UCD known and the first spectroscopically verified massive UCD which is located in a low-density environment. The object, we name SUCD1, was identified in Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) imaging and confirmed to be associated with the Sombrero galaxy by its recession velocity obtained from Keck spectra. The light profile is well fitted by a Wilson model. We measure a half-light size of 14.7 ± 1.4 pc, an absolute magnitude of MV=-12.3 mag(MK=-15.1 mag) and an internal velocity dispersion of 25.0 ± 5.6 km s-1. Such values are typical of UCDs. From Lick spectral indices we measure a luminosity-weighted central age of 12.6 ± 0.9 Gyr, [Fe/H] of -0.08 ± 0.08 dex and [α/Fe] of 0.06 ± 0.07 dex. The lack of colour gradients suggests these values are representative of the entire UCD. The derived stellar and virial masses are the same, within errors, at ∼3.3 × 107 M⊙. Thus, we find no strong evidence for dark matter or the need to invoke a non-standard initial mass function. We also report arguably the first X-ray detection of a bona fide UCD, which we attribute to the presence of low-mass X-ray binaries. The X-ray luminosity of LX= 0.56 × 1038 erg s-1 is consistent with the values observed for globular clusters (GCs) of the same metallicity. Overall, we find SUCD1 has properties similar to other known UCDs and massive GCs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".