Physical properties and environments of nearby galaxies

TL;DR

This paper reviews the physical properties and environmental influences on nearby galaxies, highlighting how galaxy populations and their scaling relations vary with environment and galaxy type based on recent large datasets.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of galaxy properties and their environmental dependence, integrating new data with detailed observations to enhance understanding of galaxy evolution.

Findings

Galaxy populations shift from late to early types with increasing density.

Scaling relations are largely environment-independent, with minor detectable effects.

Galaxy properties vary among different morphological types and environments.

Abstract

We review the physical properties of nearby, relatively luminous galaxies, using results from newly available massive data sets together with more detailed observations. First, we present the global distribution of properties, including the optical and ultraviolet luminosity, stellar mass, and atomic gas mass functions. Second, we describe the shift of the galaxy population from "late" galaxy types in underdense regions to "early" galaxy types in overdense regions. We emphasize that the scaling relations followed by each galaxy type change very little with environment, with the exception of some minor but detectable effects. The shift in the population is apparent even at the densities of small groups and therefore cannot be exclusively due to physical processes operating in rich clusters. Third, we divide galaxies into four crude types -- spiral, lenticular, elliptical, and merging systems -- and describe some of their more detailed properties. We attempt to put these detailed properties into the global context provided by large surveys.