No Arabic abstract
We present a study on the environments of the SDSS galaxies divided into fine classes based on their morphology, colour and spectral features. The SDSS galaxies are classified into early-type and late-type; red and blue; passive, HII, Seyfert and LINER, which returns a total of 16 fine classes of galaxies. We estimate the local number density, target-excluded local luminosity density, local colour, close pair fraction and the luminosity and colour of the brightest neighbour, which are compared between the fine classes comprehensively. The morphology-colour class of galaxies strongly depends on the local density, with the approximate order of high-density preference: red early-type galaxies (REGs) -- red late-type galaxies (RLGs) -- blue early-type galaxies (BEGs) -- blue late-type galaxies (BLGs). We find that high-density environments (like cluster environments) seem to suppress AGN activity. The pair fraction of HII REGs does not show statistically significant difference from that of passive REGs, while the pair fraction of HII BLGs is smaller than that of non-HII BLGs. HII BLGs show obvious double (red + blue) peaks in the distribution of the brightest neighbour colour, while red galaxies show a single red peak. The brightest neighbours of Seyfert BLGs tend to be blue, while those of LINER BLGs tend to be red, which implies that the difference between Seyfert and LINER may be related to the pair interaction. Other various environments of the fine classes are investigated, and their implication on galaxy evolution is discussed.
We present a multi-wavelength study of the nature of the SDSS galaxies divided into fine classes based on their morphology, colour and spectral features. The SDSS galaxies are classified into early-type and late-type; red and blue; passive, HII, Seyfert and LINER, which returns a total of 16 fine classes of galaxies. The properties of galaxies in each fine class are investigated from radio to X-ray, using 2MASS, IRAS, FIRST, NVSS, GALEX and ROSAT data. The UV - optical - NIR colours of blue early-type galaxies (BEGs) seem to result from the combination of old stellar population and recent star formation (SF). Non-passive red early-type galaxies (REGs) have larger metallicity and younger age than passive REGs, which implies that non-passive REGs have suffered recent SF adding young and metal-rich stars to them. The radio detection fraction of REGs strongly depends on their optical absolute magnitudes, while that of most late-type galaxies does not, implying the difference in their radio sources: AGN and SF. The UV - optical colours and the radio detection fraction of passive RLGs show that they have properties similar to REGs rather than non-passive RLGs. Dust extinction may not be a dominant factor making RLGs red, because RLGs are detected in the mid- and far-infrared bands less efficiently than blue late-type galaxies (BLGs). The passive BLGs have very blue UV - optical - NIR colours, implying either recent SF quenching or current SF in their outskirts. Including star formation rate, other multi-wavelength properties in each fine class are investigated, and their implication on the identity of each fine class is discussed (abridged).
We use the Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to investigate the relation between galaxy rest frame u-r colour, morphology, as described by the concentration and Sersic indices, and environmental density, for a sample of 79,553 galaxies at z < ~0.1. We split the samples according to density and luminosity and recover the expected bimodal distribution in the colour-morphology plane, shown especially clearly by this subsampling. We quantify the bimodality by a sum of two Gaussians on the colour and morphology axes and show that, for the red/early-type population both colour and morphology do not change significantly as a function of density. For the blue/late-type population, with increasing density the colour becomes redder but the morphology again does not change significantly. Both populations become monotonically redder and of earlier type with increasing luminosity. There is no significant qualitative difference between the behaviour of the two morphological measures. We supplement the morphological sample with 13,655 galaxies assigned Hubble types by an artificial neural network. We find, however, that the resulting distribution is less well described by two Gaussians. Therefore, there are either more than two significant morphological populations, physical processes not seen in colour space, or the Hubble type, particularly the different subtypes of spirals Sa-Sd, has an irreducible fuzziness when related to environmental density. For each of the three measures of morphology, on removing the density relation due to it, we recover a strong residual relation in colour. However, on similarly removing the colour-density relation there is no evidence for a residual relation due to morphology. [Abridged]
For the first time spectroscopic galaxy redshift surveys are reaching the scales where galaxies can be studied together with the nearest quasars. This gives an opportunity to study the dependence between the activity of a quasar and its environment in a more extensive way than before. We study the spatial distribution of galaxies and groups of galaxies in the environments of low redshift quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Our aim is to understand how the nearby quasars are embedded in the local and global density field of galaxies and how the environment affects quasar activity. We analyse the environments of nearby quasars using number counts of galaxies. We also study the dependence of group properties to their distance to the nearest quasar. The large scale environments are studied by analysing the locations of quasars in the luminosity density field. Our study of the number counts of galaxies in quasar environments shows an underdensity of bright galaxies at a few Mpc from quasars. Also, the groups of galaxies that have a quasar closer than 2Mpc are poorer and less luminous than in average. Our analysis on the luminosity density field shows that quasars clearly avoid rich superclusters. Nearby quasars seem to be located in outskirts of superclusters or in filaments connecting them. Our results suggest that quasar evolution may be affected by density variations both on supercluster scales and in the local environment.
Previous studies have shown the filamentary structures in the cosmic web influence the alignments of nearby galaxies. We study this effect in the LOWZ sample of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using the Cosmic Web Reconstruction filament catalogue. We find that LOWZ galaxies exhibit a small but statistically significant alignment in the direction parallel to the orientation of nearby filaments. This effect is detectable even in the absence of nearby galaxy clusters, which suggests it is an effect from the matter distribution in the filament. A nonparametric regression model suggests that the alignment effect with filaments extends over separations of 30-40 Mpc. We find that galaxies that are bright and early-forming align more strongly with the directions of nearby filaments than those that are faint and late-forming; however, trends with stellar mass are less statistically significant, within the narrow range of stellar mass of this sample.
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) surveyed 14,555 square degrees, and delivered over a trillion pixels of imaging data. We present a study of galaxy clustering using 900,000 luminous galaxies with photometric redshifts, spanning between $z=0.45$ and $z=0.65$, constructed from the SDSS using methods described in Ross et al. (2011). This data-set spans 11,000 square degrees and probes a volume of $3h^{-3} rm{Gpc}^3$, making it the largest volume ever used for galaxy clustering measurements. We present a novel treatment of the observational systematics and its applications to the clustering signals from the data set. In this paper, we measure the angular clustering using an optimal quadratic estimator at 4 redshift slices with an accuracy of ~15% with bin size of delta_l = 10 on scales of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) (at l~40-400). We derive cosmological constraints using the full-shape of the power-spectra. For a flat Lambda CDM model, when combined with Cosmic Microwave Background Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7 (WMAP7) and H_0 constraints from 600 Cepheids observed by HST, we find Omega_Lambda = 0.73 +/- 0.019 and H_0 to be 70.5 +/- 1.6 km/s/Mpc. For an open Lambda CDM model, when combined with WMAP7 + HST, we find $Omega_K = 0.0035 +/- 0.0054, improved over WMAP7+HST alone by 40%. For a wCDM model, when combined with WMAP7+HST+SN, we find w = -1.071 +/- 0.078, and H_0 to be 71.3 +/- 1.7 km/s/Mpc, which is competitive with the latest large scale structure constraints from large spectroscopic surveys such as SDSS Data Release 7 (DR7) (Reid et al. 2010, Percival et al. 2010, Montesano et al. 2011) and WiggleZ (Blake et al. 2011). The SDSS-III Data Release 8 (SDSS-III DR8) Angular Clustering Data allows a wide range of investigations into the cosmological model, cosmic expansion (via BAO), Gaussianity of initial conditions and neutrino masses. (abridged)