Early-type galaxies in the SDSS
M. Bernardi, R. K. Sheth, J. Annis, S. Burles, D. J. Eisenstein, D. P., Finkbeiner, D. W. Hogg, R. H. Lupton, D. J. Schlegel, M. Subbarao, N. A., Bahcall, J. P. Blakeslee, J. Brinkmann, F. J. Castander, A. J. Connolly, I., Csabai, M. Doi, M. Fukugita, J. Frieman, T. Heckman

TL;DR
This study analyzes nearly 9000 early-type galaxies from SDSS, revealing their scaling relations, chemical properties, and evolutionary trends, and finds that their characteristics are consistent with passive evolution over the past 9 billion years.
Contribution
It provides a comprehensive analysis of the scaling relations, chemical abundances, and evolution of early-type galaxies using a large SDSS sample, including mock catalog validation.
Findings
Scaling relations are consistent across g*, r*, i*, z* bands.
Higher redshift galaxies are bluer and slightly more luminous, indicating passive evolution.
Galaxies in dense regions show slight differences in the Fundamental Plane.
Abstract
A sample of nearly 9000 early-type galaxies, in the redshift range 0.01<z<0.3, was selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using morphological and spectral criteria. The sample was used to study how early-type galaxy observables, including luminosity L, effective radius R, surface brightness I, color, and velocity dispersion V, are correlated with one another. Measurement biases are understood with mock catalogs which reproduce all of the observed scaling relations. At any given redshift, the intrinsic distribution of luminosities, sizes and velocity dispersions in our sample are all approximately Gaussian. In the r* band L ~ V^3.91, L ~ R^1.58, R ~ I^(-0.75), and the Fundamental Plane relation is R ~ V^(1.49) I^(-0.75). These relations are approximately the same in the g*, i* and z* bands. At fixed luminosity, the mass-to-light ratio scales as M/L ~ L^0.14. The g*-r* color scales as…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstronomy and Astrophysical Research · Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena · Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
