We study the stellar haloes of galaxies out to 70-100 kpc as a function of stellar mass and galaxy type by stacking aligned $r$ and $g$ band images from a sample of 45508 galaxies from SDSS DR9 in the redshift range $0.06,le,z,le,0.1$ and in the mass
range $10^{10.0} M_{odot} < M_{*} < 10^{11.4} M_{odot}$r. We derive surface brightness profiles to a depth of almost $mu_r sim 32 ,mathrm{mag,arcsec}^{-2}$. We find that the ellipticity of the stellar halo is a function of galaxy stellar mass and that the haloes of high concentration ($C > 2.6$) galaxies are more elliptical than those of low concentration ($C < 2.6$) galaxies. The $g$-$r$ colour profile of high concentration galaxies reveals that the $g$-$r$ colour of the stellar population in the stellar halo is bluer than in the main galaxy, and the colour of the stellar halo is redder for higher mass galaxies. We further demonstrate that the full two-dimensional surface intensity distribution of our galaxy stacks can only be fit through multi-component S{e}rsic models. Using the fraction of light in the outer component of the models as a proxy for the fraction of accreted stellar light, we show that this fraction is a function of stellar mass and galaxy type. For high concentration galaxies, the fraction of accreted stellar light rises from $30%$ to $70%$ for galaxies in the stellar mass range from $10^{10.0} M_{odot}$ to $10^{11.4} M_{odot}$. The fraction of accreted light is much smaller in low concentration systems, increasing from $2%$ to $25%$ over the same mass range. This work provides important constraints for the theoretical understanding of the formation of stellar haloes of galaxies.
We use a stacking technique to measure the average HI content of a volume-limited sample of 1871 AGN host galaxies from a parent sample of galaxies selected from the SDSS and GALEX imaging surveys with stellar masses greater than 10^10 M_sun and reds
hifts in the range 0.025<z<0.05. HI data are available from the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey. In previous work, we found that the HI gas fraction in galaxies correlates most strongly with the combination of optical/UV colour and stellar surface mass density. We therefore build a control sample of non-AGN matched to the AGN hosts in these two properties. We study trends in HI gas mass fraction (M(HI)/M_*), where M_* is the stellar mass) as a function of black hole accretion rate indicator L[OIII]/M(BH). We find no significant difference in HI content between AGN and control samples at all values of black hole accretion rate probed by the galaxies in our sample. This indicates that AGN do not influence the large-scale gaseous properties of galaxies in the local Universe. We have studied the variation in HI mass fraction with black hole accretion rate in the blue and red galaxy populations. In the blue population, the HI gas fraction is independent of accretion rate, indicating that accretion is not sensitive to the properties of the interstellar medium of the galaxy on large scales. However, in the red population accretion rate and gas fraction do correlate. The measured gas fractions in this population are not too different from the ones expected from a stellar mass loss origin, implying that the fuel supply in the red AGN population could be a mixture of mass loss from stars and gas present in disks.
The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS) is an ambitious program designed to investigate the cold gas properties of massive galaxies, a challenging population for HI studies. Using the Arecibo radio telescope, GASS is gathering high-quality HI-line spect
ra for an unbiased sample of ~1000 galaxies with stellar masses greater than 10^10 Msun and redshifts 0.025 < z < 0.05, uniformly selected from the SDSS spectroscopic and GALEX imaging surveys. The galaxies are observed until detected or until a low gas mass fraction limit (1.5-5%) is reached. We present initial results based on the first Data Release, which consists of ~20% of the final GASS sample. We use this data set to explore the main scaling relations of HI gas fraction with galaxy structure and NUV-r colour, and show our best fit plane describing the relation between gas fraction, stellar mass surface density and NUV-r colour. Interesting outliers from this plane include gas-rich red sequence galaxies that may be in the process of regrowing their disks, as well as blue, but gas-poor spirals.
A catalogue of 14453 radio-loud AGN with 1.4 GHz fluxes above 3.5 mJy in the redshift range 0.4<z<0.8, has been constructed from the cross-correlation of the NVSS and FIRST radio surveys with the MegaZ-LRG catalogue of luminous red galaxies derived f
rom Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging data. New techniques were developed for extending the cross-correlation algorithm to FIRST detections that are below the nominal 1 mJy S/N limit of the catalogued sources. We estimate a reliability of ~98.3%, and completeness level (for LRGS) of about 95% for our new catalogue. We present a new determination of the luminosity function of radio AGN at z~0.55 and compare this to the luminosity function of nearby (z~0.1) radio sources from the SDSS main survey. The comoving number density of radio AGN with luminosities less than 10^{25} W Hz^{-1} increases by a factor ~1.5 between z=0.1 and z=0.55. At higher lumiosities, this factor increases sharply, reaching values of more than 10 at radio luminosities larger than 10^{26} W Hz^{-1}. We then study how the relation between radio AGN and their host galaxies evolves with redshift. Our main conclusion is that the fraction of radio-loud AGN increases towards higher redshift in all massive galaxies, but the evolution is particularly strong for the lower mass galaxies in our sample. These trends may be understood if there are two classes of radio galaxies (likely associated with the radio and quasar mode dichotomy) that have different fuelling/triggering mechanisms and hence evolve in different ways.
The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS) is a large targeted survey that started at Arecibo in March 2008. GASS is designed to measure the neutral hydrogen content of ~1000 massive galaxies (with stellar mass Mstar > 10^10 Msun) at redshift 0.025<z<0.05,
uniformly selected from the SDSS spectroscopic and GALEX imaging surveys. Our selected mass range straddles the recently identified transition mass (Mstar ~3x10^10 Msun) above which galaxies show a marked decrease in their present to past-averaged star formation rates. GASS will produce the first statistically significant sample of massive transition galaxies with homogeneously measured stellar masses, star formation rates and gas properties. The analysis of this sample will allow us to investigate if and how the cold gas responds to a variety of different physical conditions in the galaxy, thus yielding insights on the physical processes responsible for the transition between blue, star-forming and red, passively evolving galaxies. GASS will be of considerably legacy value not only in isolation but also by complementing ongoing HI-selected surveys.
We use empirical techniques to interpret the near-infrared colours of a sample of 5800 galaxies drawn from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) main spectroscopic sample with YJHK photometry from the UK Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) data release one.
We study correlations between near-IR colours measured within SDSS fibre and physical parameters derived from the spectra. These parameters include specific star formation rate, stellar age, metallicity and dust attenuation. All correlations are analyzed for samples of galaxies that are closely matched in redshift, in stellar mass and in concentration index. Whereas more strongly star-forming galaxies have bluer optical colours, the opposite is true at near-IR wavelengths -- galaxies with higher specific star formation rate have redder near-IR colours. This result agrees qualitatively with the predictions of models in which Thermally Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch (TP-AGB) stars dominate the H and K-band light of a galaxy following a burst of star formation. We also find a surprisingly strong correlation between the near-IR colours of star-forming galaxies and their dust attenuation as measured from the Balmer decrement. Unlike optical colours, however, near-IR colours exhibit very little dependence on galaxy inclination. This suggests that the correlation of near-IR colours with dust attenuation arises because TP-AGB stars are the main source of dust in the galaxy. Finally, we compare the near-IR colours of the galaxies in our sample to the predictions of three different stellar population models: the Bruzual & Charlot 2003 model, a preliminary version of a new model under development by Charlot & Bruzual, which includes a new prescription for AGB star evolution, and the Maraston 2005 model.
