Instituto de Astronomia y Meteorologia, Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico
C. Martinez-Robles (IAM-UdG), A. Marquez-Lugo (IAM-UdG), D. Zepeda-Garcia (IAM-UdG)
NGC 4660, in the Virgo cluster, is a well-studied elliptical galaxy which has a strong disk component (D/T about 0.2-0.3). The central regions including the disk component have stellar populations with ages about 12-13 Gyr from SAURON studies. However a long narrow tidal filament associated with the galaxy has been recently seen in deep co-added Schmidt plate images and deep CCD frames, implying that the galaxy has undergone a tidal interaction and merger within the last few Gyr. The narrowness of the filament implies a wet merger with at least one spiral galaxy involved, but the current state of the system has little evidence for this. However a 2-component photometric fit using GALFIT shows much bluer B-V colours for the disk component than for the elliptical component, whuch may trace enhanced star formation in the disk caused by the interaction.