This project will search for the remnants of tidally destroyed galaxies in the intergalactic regions of clusters, in an attempt to determine the eventual fate of the material presently being liberated in cataclysmic interactions, and to understand how the interactions and evolution of galaxies in the cluster influence each other. An international collaboration is carrying out deep, wide-field redshift surveys of selected galaxy clusters, which has already led to a new class of ultra-compact dwarf (UCD) galaxy. The favored interpretation is that they are the tidally stripped nuclei of common dwarf ellipticals or small spirals. Wide field imaging and targeted redshift studies will search for UCDs in Coma, the quintessential rich cluster, testing the prediction that UCDs are tidal remnants, and using them to probe the evolutionary state of the cluster.
Software tools developed to analyze the data will be made available to the community, and the new insights expected from this research will be disseminated to popular magazines for the general public.
