The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. VI. Isophotal Analysis and the Structure of Early-Type Galaxies

By L. Ferrarese, P. Côté, Andrés Jordán, E. Peng, J. Blakeslee, S. Piatek, S. Mei, David Merritt, Milos Milosavljevic, J. Tonry and 1 more. 2006

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We present a detailed analysis of the morphology, isophotal parameters, and surface brightness profiles for 100 early-type members of the Virgo Cluster, from dwarfs (MB = -15.1 mag) to giants (MB = -21.8 mag), imaged in the g and z passbands using the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble Space Telescope. Dust and complex morphological structures are common. Dust is detected in 42% of galaxies brighter than BT = 12.15 mag, while kiloparsec-scale stellar disk, bars, and nuclear stellar disks are seen in 60% of galaxies with intermediate luminosity. Isophotal parameters are derived typically within 8 kpc from the center for the brightest galaxies, and 1.5 kpc for the faintest systems, with a resolution of 7 pc. For most galaxies, the surface brightness profiles are well described by a Sérsic model with index n that increases steadily with the galaxy luminosity; only for 8 of the 10 brightest galaxies are the inner profiles (typically within 100 pc of the center) lower than expected based on an extrapolation of the outer Sérsic model, and are better described by a single power-law function. Contrary to previous claims, we find no evidence in support of a strong bimodal behavior of the logarithmic slope of the inner surface brightness profile, γ; in particular the γ distribution for galaxies that do not show evidence of multiple morphological components is unimodal across the entire magnitude range spanned by the ACSVCS galaxies. Although the brightest galaxies have shallow inner profiles, the shallowest profiles are found in faint dwarf systems. The widely adopted separation of early-type galaxies between "core" and "power-law" types is questioned based on the present study.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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THE HERSCHEL REFERENCE SURVEY: DUST IN EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES AND ACROSS THE HUBBLE SEQUENCE (2011, background): “…thought to be devoid of a cool ISM, optical absorption studies suggested that more than 50% of ellipticals contain some dust (Goudfrooij et al. 1994; van Dokkum & Franx 1995; Tran et al. 2001; Ferrarese et al. 2006) and therefore molecular gas, though the mass of dust is uncertain from these works.”
The ATLAS3D project – III. A census of the stellar angular momentum within the effective radius of early‐type galaxies: unveiling the distribution of fast and slow rotators (2011, background): “NGC 4458 also stands out as a SR, with a KDC (group c) and having a light excess which seems to correspond to a very central stellar disc (Morelli et al. 2004; Ferrarese et al. 2006).”
Virgo Cluster Early-Type Dwarf Galaxies with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. II. Early-Type Dwarfs with Central Star Formation (2006, methodology): “While Ferrarese et al. (2006) suggest to reclassify four dE(bc)s as dE/dIrr based on their blue central colors and irregular isophotal shapes in the center, we do not use color as a criterion for morphological classification.”
THE NATURE OF LINER-LIKE EMISSION IN RED GALAXIES (2011, methodology): “Many studies (Lauer et al. 1995; Faber et al. 1997; Rest et al. 2001; Ravindranath et al. 2001; Lauer et al. 2005; Ferrarese et al. 2006; Glass et al. 2011) have shown that the inner power-law slope of the stellar luminosity density profiles changes from−1 for bright galaxies to −2 for faint…”
SIZES AND SURFACE BRIGHTNESS PROFILES OF QUIESCENT GALAXIES AT z ∼ 2 (2011, methodology): “Sérsic (1968) profiles are commonly used, since these have been shown to closely match the surface brightness profiles of nearby early-type galax- ies (e.g., Caon et al. 1993; Graham et al. 2003; Trujillo et al. 2004; Ferrarese et al. 2006; Côté et al. 2007; Kormendy et al. 2009).”
WIDE-FIELD PRECISION KINEMATICS OF THE M87 GLOBULAR CLUSTER SYSTEM (2011, background): “These include peculiarities in the stellar isophotes, colors, and kinematics (Rood 1965; Faber 1973; Sandage & Binggeli 1984; Prugniel et al. 1987; van den Bosch et al. 1994; Halliday et al. 2001; Lucero et al. 2005; Ferrarese et al. 2006).”
Mass Deficits, Stalling Radii, and the Merger Histories of Elliptical Galaxies (2006, methodology): “One galaxy from the Ferrarese et al. (2006) sample, NGC 798, was excluded since it contains a large-scale stellar disk.”
How do massive black holes get their gas (2009, background): “B1) significantly exceeds the highest nuclear densities observed in any cusp ellipticals (Ferrarese et al. 2006b; Lauer et al. 2007; Kormendy et al. 2009) or for that matter any nuclear star clusters, globular clusters, nuclear discs or other highdensity stellar systems (Hopkins et al. 2010).”
Ejection of Supermassive Black Holes from Galaxy Cores (2007, methodology): “This could explain the peak in the distribution of observed mass deficits atMdef/MBH ≈ 1 (Graham 2004; Ferrarese et al. 2006).”
THE SIZE–VIRIAL RADIUS RELATION OF GALAXIES (2012, background): “These include ellipticals (Es) and dwarf elliptical (dE) galaxies in the Virgo cluster with HST (Ferrarese et al. 2006) and the VLT/FORS1 observations of dEs in the Hydra I and Centaurus clusters (Misgeld et al. 2008, 2009), and the dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies in the Local Group.”
Structure and Kinematics of Early-Type Galaxies from Integral Field Spectroscopy (2016, methodology): “The physical relevance of this possible dichotomy was summarized in Kormendy & Bender (1996), who proposed a revision to Hubble’s classification of Es based on isophotal shapes, and by Faber et al. (1997); but see Ferrarese et al. (2006) for a different view.”
EFFICIENT MERGER OF BINARY SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES IN MERGING GALAXIES (2011, background): “Effective radii scale very weakly with galaxy luminosity (though with considerable scatter; e.g. Ferrarese et al. (2006)) and in the case of 109M⊙ galaxy, whose SMBH would have a mass more suited to detection by LISA, the physical unit of time would be closer to 6Myr.”
Compact high-redshift galaxies are the cores of the most massive present-day spheroids (2009, background): “Their sample selection as well as other measurements (see those works and e.g. Trujillo et al. 2002; Ferrarese et al. 2006; Allen et al. 2006) and the close agreement in fundamental plane correlations and Sersic index distributions in larger volumes (e.g. Shen et al. 2003) suggest that this is…”
DISSIPATION AND EXTRA LIGHT IN GALACTIC NUCLEI. IV. EVOLUTION IN THE SCALING RELATIONS OF SPHEROIDS (2008, background): “The apparent trends of Sersic index with mass are much stronger if dwarf spheroidals are included, as in many observational samples (e.g. Graham & Driver 2007; Ferrarese et al. 2006).”
STRUCTURE AND FORMATION OF ELLIPTICAL AND SPHEROIDAL GALAXIES (2008, methodology): “In summary, we believe that there are three main reasons why Ferrarese et al. (2006a) missed the distinction between elliptical and spheroidal galaxies.”
Accurate masses for dispersion-supported galaxies (2009, background): “…(2005), y) Simien & Prugniel (2002), z) Quoted from NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, aa) Simien & Prugniel (2000), bb) Simien & Prugniel (1997c), cc) Simien & Prugniel (1997b), dd) Kormendy et al. (2009), who present similar parameters to those the originally derived in Ferrarese et al. (2006).”
A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies. II. Formation of Red Ellipticals (2007, background): “Whether or not the division is strict (see, e.g., Ferrarese et al. 2006), the most massive ellipticals tend to be slowly rotating, anisotropic systems with boxy isophotal shapes and central core profile deviations from a pure Sersic profile.”
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. XII. The Luminosity Function of Globular Clusters in Early-Type Galaxies (2007, methodology): “…with their giant host (in the casethey were physically associated), we use the median effective radius of allVCS galaxies with magnitides within 0:5 mag of each companion galaxy, instead of their measured one (the effective radii of all ACSVCS galaxies have ben measured by Ferrarese et al. 2006a).”
REVISITING THE SCALING RELATIONS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES AND HOST GALAXY PROPERTIES (2012, result): “Faber et al. (1997) and Lauer et al. (2007b) distinguished “power-law” galaxies with γ > 0.5 from “core” galaxies with γ < 0.3, although other studies have reported a continuous trend in γ (e.g., Ferrarese et al. 2006; Glass et al. 2011).”