The SeCCO survey was originally aimed at obtaining deep wide field imaging of Ultra Compact High Velocity HI Clouds that were proposed as the gaseous components of faint dwarf galaxies in the Local Volume. The presence of a stellar counterpart would confirm the galaxian nature of these objects, as in the case of the the faint dwarf irregular Leo P .  To this aim we have followed-up 25 UCHVC from the list provided by the ALFALFA survey (+18 from the GALFA HI survey) with deep wide-field imaging using the two twins LBC camera mounted on the Large Binocular Telescope, plus some follow-up with ESO-VLT, LBT, Grantecan and other observational facilities.

The main result of the survey is that there are no detectable local stellar systems associated to these compact clouds.

However we discovered a star-forming system associated to a cloud that turned out to be located in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies (SECCO 1). This paved the road to unveiling a new class of stellar systems: isolated star-forming clouds likely confined by the pressure of the hot Intra cluster medium. The focus of the project shifted to the observational and theoretical characterisation of this new class of systems

In italian “secco” means “dry”: indeed we are looking for the possible dry component (stars) of wet (gaseous) celestial bodies.

Publications

Photos of ghosts

“...Ten million stars

and the whispered harmonies of leaves

we were these....”

  SECCO 1 on ScienceNews