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Register a new userThe Optical and Near-Infrared Morphologies of Isolated Early Type Galaxies
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In order to study early type galaxies in their simplest environments, we have constructed a well-defined sample of 30 isolated galaxies. The sample contains all RC3 early-type galaxies with no other cataloged galaxy with known redshift lying within a projected radius of 1 (h_100)^{-1} Mpc and =/- 1000 km/s (where we use the recessional velocities in the RC3). We have obtained optical and near-infrared images of 23 of the galaxies and of a comparison sample of 13 early-type galaxies in X-ray detected poor groups of galaxies. We have applied the techniques of unsharp masking, galaxy model division, and color maps to search for morphological features that might provide clues to the evolution of these galaxies. Evidence for dust features is found in approximately 75% of both the isolated and group galaxies (17 of 22 and 9 of 12, respectively). However, shells or tidal features are much more prevalent in our isolated sample than in our group sample (9 of 22 or 41% versus 1 of 12 or 8%, respectively). The isolation and colors of these shell galaxies make it unlikely that tidal interactions or asymmetric star formation are the causes of such features. One model that is not ruled out is that mergers produce the shells. If shells and dust are both merger signatures, the absence of shells in group ellipticals implies that shells: 1) form more easily, 2) are younger, and/or 3) are longer-lived in isolated environments.
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The relation between X-ray luminosity and near-infrared luminosity for early-type galaxies has been examined. Near-infrared (NIR) luminosities should provide a superior measure of stellar mass compared to optical luminosities used in previous studies, especially if there is significant star-formation or dust present in the galaxies. However, we show that the X-ray-NIR relations are remarkably consistent with the X-ray-optical relations. This indicates that the large scatter of the relations is dominated by scatter in the X-ray properties of early-type galaxies, and is consistent with early-types consisting of old, quiescent stellar populations. We have investigated scatter in terms of environment, surface brightness profile, Mg2, H_beta, H_gamma line strength indices, spectroscopic age, and nuclear H_alpha emission. We found that galaxies with high Mg2 index, low H_beta and H_gamma indices or a `core profile have a large scatter in Lx, whereas galaxies with low Mg2, high H_beta and H_gamma indices or `power-law profiles, generally have Lx<10^41 erg/s. There is no clear trend in the scatter with environment or nuclear H_alpha emission.
(abridged) We introduce and discuss the properties of a theoretical (B-K)-(J-K) integrated colour diagram for single-age, single-metallicity stellar populations. This combination of integrated colours is able to largely disentangle the well known age-metallicity degeneracy when the age of the population is greater than ~300 Myr. We discuss in detail the effect on this colour-colour diagram of alpha-enhanced metal abundance ratios, the presence of blue horizontal branch stars unaccounted for in the theoretical calibration, and of statistical colour fluctuations in low mass stellar systems. In the case of populations with multiple stellar generations, the luminosity-weighted mean age obtained from this diagram is shown to be heavily biased towards the youngest stellar components. We apply this method to several datasets for which optical and near-IR photometry are available in the literature. For the two Local Group dwarf galaxies NGC185 and NGC6822, the mean ages derived from the integrated colours are consistent with the star formation histories inferred independently from photometric observations of their resolved stellar populations. A sample of bright field and Virgo cluster elliptical galaxies is found to exhibit a range of luminosity-weighted mean ages from 3 to 14 Gyr, with a mean of 8 Gyr, independent of environment, and mean metallicities at or just above the solar value. Colour gradients are found in all of the galaxies studied, in the sense that central regions are redder. Aperture data for five Virgo early-type dwarf galaxies show that these galaxies appear to be shifted to lower mean metallicities and lower mean ages (range 1 to 6 Gyr) than their higher luminosity counterparts.
Near-infrared (hereafter NIR) data may provide complementary information to the traditional optical population synthesis analysis of unresolved stellar populations because the spectral energy distribution of the galaxies in the 1-2.5mum range is dominated by different types of stars than at optical wavelengths. Furthermore, NIR data are subjected to less absorption and hence could constrain the stellar populations in dust-obscured galaxies. We want to develop observational constraints on the stellar populations of unresolved stellar systems in the NIR. To achieve this goal we need a benchmark sample of NIR spectra of ``simple early-type galaxies, to be used for testing and calibrating the outputs of population synthesis models. We obtained low-resolution (R~1000) long-slit spectra between 1.5 and 2.4mum for 14 nearby early-type galaxies using SofI at NTT and higher resolution (R~3000) long-slit spectra, centered at the MgI at ~1.51mum for a heterogeneous sample of 5 nearby galaxies observed with ISAAC at VLT. We defined spectral indices for CO, NaI, CaI and MgI features and measured the strengths of these features in the sample galaxies. We defined a new global NIR metallicity index, suitable for abundance measurements in low-resolution spectra. Finally, we present an average NIR spectrum of an early-type galaxy, built from a homogenized subset of our sample. The NIR spectra of the sample galaxies show great similarity and the strength of some features does correlate with the iron abundance [Fe/H] and optical metal features of the galaxies. The data suggest that the NIR metal features, in combination with a hydrogen absorption feature may be able to break the age-metallicity degeneracy just like the Mg and Fe features in the optical wavelength range.
Here we present new measurements of effective radii, surface brightnesses and internal velocity dispersions for 23 isolated early-type galaxies. The photometric properties are derived from new multi-colour imaging of 10 galaxies, whereas the central kinematics for 7 galaxies are taken from forthcoming work by Hau & Forbes. These are supplemented with data from the literature. We reproduce the colour-magnitude and Kormendy relations and strengthen the result of Paper I that isolated galaxies follow the same photometric relations as galaxies in high density environments. We also find that some isolated galaxies reveal fine structure indicative of a recent merger while others appear undisturbed. We examine the Fundamental Plane in both traditional R_e, mu_e and sigma space and also kappa-space. Most isolated galaxies follow the same Fundamental Plane tilt and scatter for galaxies in high density environments. However, a few galaxies notably deviate from the plane in the sense of having smaller M/L ratios. This can be understood in terms of their younger stellar populations, which are presumably induced by a gaseous merger. Overall, isolated galaxies have similar properties to those in roups and clusters with a slight enhancement in the frequency of recent mergers/interactions.
We performed K band surface photometry for luminous early-type galaxies in a nearby rich cluster ABELL 2199. Combining it with B and R band surface photometry, radial variations of B-R and R-K colours in the galaxies were investigated. It is found that the inner regions of the galaxies are redder in both of B-R and R-K colours. Comparing the radial variations of both of the colours with predictions of Simple Stellar Population (SSP) models for a range of ages and metallicities, it is suggested that the cluster ellipticals have negative metallicity gradients but their age gradients are consistent with zero, although our sample is small; the typical metallicity gradient is estimated to be -0.16+- 0.09 in dlogZ/dlogr, while the age gradient is estimated to be -0.10 +- 0.14 in dlog(age)/dlogr. Considering that similar results have also been derived in the other recent studies using samples of ellipticals in the Coma cluster and less dense environments, it seems that there is no strong dependence on galaxy environment in radial gradient of stellar population in elliptical galaxy.
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