Early-Type Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. IV. Colors and Chemical Evolution

By M. Bernardi, R. Sheth, James Annis, S. Burles, Douglas P. Finkbeiner, Robert Lupton, David Schlegel, Mark SubbaRao, N. Bahcall, J. Blakeslee and 19 more. 2003

179 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The colors and chemical abundances of early-type galaxies at redshifts z < 0.3 are studied using a sample of nearly 9000 galaxies, selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using morphological and spectral criteria. In this sample, redder galaxies have larger velocity dispersions: g*-r* ∝ σ0.26±0.02. Color also correlates with magnitude, g* - r* ∝ (-0.025 ± 0.003)M, and size, but these correlations are entirely due to the L-σ and Ro-σ relations: the primary correlation is color-σ. The red light in early-type galaxies is, on average, slightly more centrally concentrated than the blue. Because of these color gradients, the strength of the color-magnitude relation depends on whether or not the colors are defined using a fixed metric aperture; the color-σ relation is less sensitive to this choice. Chemical evolution and star formation histories of early-type galaxies are investigated using co-added spectra of similar objects. The resulting library of co-added spectra contains spectra that represent a wide range of early-type galaxies. Chemical abundances correlate primarily with velocity dispersion: Hβ ∝ σ-0.24±0.03, Mg2 ∝ σ0.20±0.02, Mg b ∝ σ0.32±0.03, and ⟨Fe⟩ ∝ σ0.11±0.03. At fixed σ, the population at z ∼ 0.2 had weaker Mg2 and stronger Hβ absorption compared to the population at z ∼ 0. It was also bluer. Comparison of these colors and line strengths and their evolution with single-burst stellar population models suggests a formation time of 9 Gyr ago, consistent with a fundamental plane analysis of this sample. Although the fundamental plane shows that galaxies in dense regions are slightly different from galaxies in less dense regions, the co-added spectra and color-magnitude relations show no statistically significant dependence on environment.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

A New Photometric Technique for the Joint Selection of Star-forming and Passive Galaxies at 1.4 ≲ z ≲ 2.5 (2004, background): “…that ellipticals and bulges formed the bulk of their stars atz >∼ 2.5− 3, both in clusters (e.g., Bower, Lucey, & Ellis 1992) and in the field (Bernardi et al. 1998, 2003), with much evidence having been accumulated from both low- and high-redshift (z ∼ 1) observations of passively evolving…”
The Fundamental Scaling Relations of Elliptical Galaxies (2005, methodology): “These simulated remnants exhibit a scatter about their mean FP of h 2i1/2 ¼ 0:062, comparable to both the observed scatter in the FP at optical wavelengths (e.g., Bernardi et al. 2003a) and that produced by the dissipational simulations.”
A Physical Model for the Coevolution of QSOs and Their Spheroidal Hosts (2003, methodology): “Recently, Cattaneo & Bernardi (2003), using the early type galaxy sample in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (Bernardi et al. 2003a), investigated the hypothesis that quasars formed together with the stellar population of ellipticals, finding a consistency with the observed luminosity function of…”
Evolution and Environment of Early-Type Galaxies (2005, methodology): “The luminosity function of this sample changes slightly with redshift (Bernardi et al. 2003b).”
A catalogue of 2D photometric decompositions in the SDSS-DR7 spectroscopic main galaxy sample: preferred models and systematics (2014, background): “…of galaxies in the local Universe trace morphological galaxy type and many other galaxy parameters related to both assembly and evolution of galaxies: colour, metallicity, gas fraction, central velocity dispersion (e.g. Bernardi et al. 2003a,b,c; Kauffmann et al. 2003; Tremonti et al. 2004).”
The Effect of Environment on the Ultraviolet Color-Magnitude Relation of Early-Type Galaxies (2006, background): “In their analysis, Bernardi et al. (2003b) also find little dependence of the color-sigma relation on environment.”
Quantifying the Bimodal Color-Magnitude Distribution of Galaxies (2003, background): “Other factors that could contribute to a difference in slope are: field versus cluster environment; Gaussian color function fitting versus E+S0 morphological selection and; aperture effects (Scodeggio 2001; Bernardi et al. 2003).”
The Velocity Dispersion Function of Early-Type Galaxies (2003, methodology): “The weak link in the procedure above is the assumption that the distribution around the mean σ − L relation is Gaussian (although the analysis in Bernardi et al. (2003b) suggests this should be reasonably accurate) with rms given by equation 3.”
The size distribution of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2003, methodology): “63 obtained by Bernardi et al. (2003b) where yet another photometric system is used.”
Early-type Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. II. Correlations between Observables (2003, methodology): “This is consistent with the model we use to make K-corrections in Paper I and is also consistent with the formation time estimates based on the fundamental plane in Paper III and galaxy colors and spectral line indexes in Paper IV.”
UV-Optical Colors as Probes of Early-Type Galaxy Evolution (2006, methodology): “The use of a 9 Gyr SSP is motivated by the fact that Bernardi et al. (2003d) find that their early-type sample can be best-fit by a 9 Gyr passively evolving SSP, formed at high redshift.”
Observational evidence for AGN feedback in early-type galaxies (2007, background): “The Bernardi et al. (2003a) catalogue is based primarily in the likelihood of the surface-brightness profile resembling a de Vaucouleurs law and a high concentration index.”
Galaxy Evolution Explorer Ultraviolet Color-Magnitude Relations and Evidence of Recent Star Formation in Early-Type Galaxies (2004, unknown): “In order to construct a sample unbiased by any specific search criterion, we search for GALEX detections of galaxies already classified as being early-type by one of the major SDSS studies (Bernardi et al. 2003a).”
STRUCTURE AND FORMATION OF ELLIPTICAL AND SPHEROIDAL GALAXIES (2008, background): “Critically important is the observation that essentially all of their star formation happened quickly and long ago (Bower et al. 1992; Bender 1996, 1997; Thomas et al. 1999, 2005; Bernardi et al. 2003; Renzini 2006).”
Early-Type Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. III. The Fundamental Plane (2003, methodology): “Paper I (Bernardi et al. 2003a) describes how the sample was selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database.”
Minor Galaxy Interactions: Star Formation Rates and Galaxy Properties (2007, background): “Galaxy colors are well correlated with gas content, star formation rates, and other galaxy properties (e.g., Sandage & Visvanathan 1978; Baldry et al. 2004; Bernardi et al. 2003; Conselice 2006).”
The SAURON project - VI. Line strength maps of 48 elliptical and lenticular galaxies (2006, background): “…by guest on 28 July 2018 log σ which has been observed by many authors (e.g. Terlevich et al. 1981; Burstein et al. 1988; Bender, Burstein & Faber 1993; Colless et al. 1999; Bernardi et al. 2003; Worthey & Collobert 2003; Denicoló et al. 2005).”
Mass downsizing and ``top-down'' assembly of early-type galaxies (2006, background): “However, the homogeneity of local cluster and field ETGs (Bernardi et al. 2003; Thomas et al. 2005) argues for the bulk of the stellar mass having formed atz > 1 even in low mass ETGs.”