Dust and ionized gas in active radio elliptical galaxies

The authors present broad and narrow bandwidth imaging of three southern elliptical galaxies which have flat-spectrum active radio cores (NGC 1052, IC 1459 and NGC 6958). All three contain dust and extended low excitation optical line emission, particularly extensive in the case of NGC 1052 which has a large H alpha + (NII) luminosity. Both NGC 1052 and IC 1459 have a spiral morphology in emission-line images. All three display independent strong evidence that a merger or infall event has recently occurred, i.e., extensive and infalling HI gas in NGC 1052, a counter-rotating core in IC 1459 and Malin-Carter shells in NGC 6958. This infall event is the most likely origin for the emission-line gas and dust, and the authors are currently investigating possible excitation mechanisms (Sparks et al. 1990).