Abstract
We report the detection of a bisymmetric nuclear spiral structure in the spiral galaxy NGC 5248.The two red spiral arms can be followed for about 3 arcsec, before they appear to end inside the radius of the circumnuclear starburst `ring' at about 5.5 arcsec or 400 pc distance from the nucleus. We combine our near-infrared Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope adaptive optics images with traditional near-infrared and optical images and show that spiral structure is present in this galaxy at spatial scales reaching from a hundred parsecs to 15 kpc. Comparison with a Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet image shows how the starburst ring is related to the nuclear spiral structure. We also show a two-dimensional Hα velocity field that reveals no evidence for systematic streaming motions near the nuclear spiral or the starburst ring, nor for a rapidly rising rotation curve.
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Laine, S., Knapen, J., Pérez-Ramírez, D. et al. Grand-Design Spirals in the Core of NGC 5248. Astrophysics and Space Science 276, 475–482 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017576024087
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017576024087