Relationship between Environment and the Broadband Optical Properties of Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We examine the relationship between environment and the luminosities, surface brightnesses, colors, and profile shapes of luminous galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). For the SDSS sample, galaxy color is the galaxy property most predictive of the local environment. Galaxy color and lumi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Astrophysical journal Vol. 629; no. 1; pp. 143 - 157
Main Authors Blanton, Michael R, Eisenstein, Daniel, Hogg, David W, Schlegel, David J, Brinkmann, J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Chicago, IL IOP Publishing 10.08.2005
University of Chicago Press
Subjects
Galaxy clusters
Galaxy evolution
galaxies: clusters: general
Galaxies
galaxies: evolution
galaxies: statistics
Optical properties
galaxies: fundamental parameters
Sky surveys
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Summary:We examine the relationship between environment and the luminosities, surface brightnesses, colors, and profile shapes of luminous galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). For the SDSS sample, galaxy color is the galaxy property most predictive of the local environment. Galaxy color and luminosity--measures of the star formation history--jointly comprise the most predictive pair of properties. At fixed luminosity and color, density is not closely related to surface brightness or to Sersic index--measures of galaxy structure. In the text, we discuss what measurable residual relationships exist, generally finding that at red colors and fixed luminosity, the mean density decreases at the highest surface brightnesses and Sersic indices. In general, these results suggest that the structural properties of galaxies are less closely related to galaxy environment than are their masses and star formation histories.
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ISSN:0004-637X
1538-4357
DOI:10.1086/422897