Forty-seven Milky Way-sized, Extremely Diffuse Galaxies in the Coma Cluster

Abstract

We report the discovery of 47 low surface brightness objects in deep images of a 3° × 3° field centered on the Coma cluster, obtained with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. The objects have central surface brightness μ(g, 0) ranging from 24-26 mag arcsec^-2 and effective radii r _eff = 3''-10'', as measured from archival Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope images. From their spatial distribution we infer that most or all of the objects are galaxies in the Coma cluster. This relatively large distance is surprising as it implies that the galaxies are very large: with r _eff = 1.5-4.6 kpc their sizes are similar to those of L _* galaxies even though their median stellar mass is only ~6 × 10⁷ M _⊙. The galaxies are relatively red and round, with langg - irang = 0.8 and langb/arang = 0.74. One of the 47 galaxies is fortuitously covered by a deep Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) observation. The ACS imaging shows a large spheroidal object with a central surface brightness μ₄₇₅ = 25.8 mag arcsec^-2, a Sérsic index n = 0.6, and an effective radius of 7'', corresponding to 3.4 kpc at the distance of Coma. The galaxy is not resolved into stars, consistent with expectations for a Coma cluster object. We speculate that these "ultra-diffuse galaxies" may have lost their gas supply at early times, possibly resulting in very high dark matter fractions.