Faint Dwarf Galaxies along the Leo Large Scale HI Gas Ring

The Leo ring in the M96 group is unique in its morphology and size among the intergalactic gas features found in nearby universe. Its ring-like structure of 200 kpc on diameter appears to be orbiting around the M105-NGC 3384 pair with $1.67{\times}109\;M{\odot}$ of HI gas. While the origin of the ring - whether it is primordial or tidally stripped - is yet unclear, the optical and gas properties of dwarf galaxies associated with the gas ring help us to understand the formation process of this large scale intergalactic HI cloud. At the first step, we present the optical catalog of dwarf galaxy candidates in the Leo ring using deep optical images with MegaCam on the CFHT. Image convolution method is used in order to detect very faint dwarf galaxies. Comparing the ALFALFA HI data from the literature, we have identified that 4 dwarf candidates coexist with HI clumps. There are also 27 HI dwarfs with no optical counterpart and 12 optical dwarfs with no HI clump. In this work, we probe the optical and global gas properties of these dwarfs.