Calibrating the fundamental plane with SDSS DR8 data

TL;DR

This paper calibrates the fundamental plane for elliptical galaxies using SDSS DR8 data, achieving 15% accuracy as a distance indicator and providing a large, well-calibrated sample for large-scale velocity studies.

Contribution

It presents the largest calibration of the fundamental plane with SDSS data, incorporating updated corrections and galaxy classifications for improved accuracy.

Findings

Achieved 15% accuracy in fundamental plane as a distance indicator.

Provided independent fits in five Sloan filters u, g, r, i, z.

Discussed the impact of calibration choices on the fundamental plane relations.

Abstract

We present a calibration of the fundamental plane using SDSS Data Release 8. We analysed about 93000 elliptical galaxies up to $z<0.2$, the largest sample used for the calibration of the fundamental plane so far. We incorporated up-to-date K-corrections and used GalaxyZoo data to classify the galaxies in our sample. We derived independent fundamental plane fits in all five Sloan filters u, g, r, i and z. A direct fit using a volume-weighted least-squares method was applied to obtain the coefficients of the fundamental plane, which implicitly corrects for the Malmquist bias. We achieved an accuracy of 15% for the fundamental plane as a distance indicator. We provide a detailed discussion on the calibrations and their influence on the resulting fits. These re-calibrated fundamental plane relations form a well-suited anchor for large-scale peculiar-velocity studies in the nearby universe. In addition to the fundamental plane, we discuss the redshift distribution of the elliptical galaxies and their global parameters.