Astron. Astrophys. 358, 845-849 (2000)

1. Introduction

In this paper we report on the serendipitous discovery of a spiral structure in the Virgo cluster dwarf elliptical IC3328. The presence of spiral structure provides compelling evidence for the disk nature of that particular dwarf galaxy. The observations are described and the light distribution is analysed in Sect. 2. In Sect. 3 we estimate the kinematical properties of the dwarf galaxy from the observed light distribution, assuming a likely value for the mass-to-light ratio and distance. We speculate on the origin of the spiral pattern in Sect. 4. The concluding section deals with the ramifications for the dwarf elliptical taxonomy arising from IC3328.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 2000

Online publication: June 20, 2000
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