1,571 research outputs found
The tilt of the Fundamental Plane of Early-type galaxies: wavelength dependence
The photometric parameters R_e and mu_e of 74 early-type (E+S0+S0a) galaxies
in the Coma cluster are derived for the first time in the near IR H band. These
are used, coupled with measurements of the central velocity dispersion found in
the literature, to determine the H band Fundamental Plane (FP) relation of this
cluster. The same procedure is applied to previously available photometric data
in the B, V, r, I, and K bands, to perform a multi-wavelength study of the FP.
Because systematic uncertainties in the value of the FP parameters are
introduced both by the choice of the fitting algorithm, and by the presence of
statistical biases connected with the sample selection procedure, we emphasize
the importance of deriving the FP parameters in the six photometric bands using
an identical fitting algorithm, and appropriate corrections to eliminate the
effects of sample incompleteness. We find that the FP mu_e coefficient is
stable with wavelength, while the sigma coefficient increases significantly
with increasing wavelength, in agreement with an earlier result presented by
Pahre & Djorgovski. The slope of the FP relation, although changing with
wavelength, never approaches the virial theorem expectation. We also find that
the magnitude of the slope change can be entirely explained by the presence of
the well known relation between color and magnitude among early-type galaxies.
We conclude that the tilt of the Fundamental Plane is significant, and must be
due to some form of broken homology among early-type galaxies, while its
wavelength dependence derives from whatever mechanism (currently the preferred
one is the existence of a mass-metal content sequence) produces the
color-magnitude relation in those galaxies.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, 6 tables; table 3 should be printed in landscape
mode, and inserted into the text. Accepted for publication in MNRA
Easylife: the data reduction and survey handling system for VIPERS
We present Easylife, the software environment developed within the framework
of the VIPERS project for automatic data reduction and survey handling.
Easylife is a comprehensive system to automatically reduce spectroscopic data,
to monitor the survey advancement at all stages, to distribute data within the
collaboration and to release data to the whole community. It is based on the
OPTICON founded project FASE, and inherits the FASE capabilities of modularity
and scalability. After describing the software architecture, the main reduction
and quality control features and the main services made available, we show its
performance in terms of reliability of results. We also show how it can be
ported to other projects having different characteristics.Comment: pre-print, 17 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacifi
Building a Sample of Distant Clusters of Galaxies
Candidate clusters of galaxies drawn from the sample identified from the
moderately deep I-band data of the ESO Imaging Survey (EIS), have been used for
follow-up optical/infrared imaging and spectroscopic observations. The
observations were conducted to assess the nature of these candidates over a
large range of redshifts. Currently, 163 EIS candidates have (V-I) colors, 15
have (I-K) and 65 cluster fields have been observed spectroscopically. From a
preliminary analysis of these data, we find that > 65% of the candidates
studied show strong evidence of being real physical associations, over the
redshift range 0.2<z<1.1. The evidence in some cases comes directly from
spectroscopic measurements, in others indirectly from the detection of
overdensities of objects with either the same color or the same photometric
redshift, or from a combination of color and spectroscopic information.
Preliminary results also suggest that the redshift derived from the
matched-filter algorithm is a reasonable measure of the cluster's redshift,
possibly overestimating it by Delta z ~0.1, at least for systems at z<0.7.
Overdensities of red objects have been detected in over 100 candidates, 38 of
which with estimated redshifts >0.6, and six candidates in the interval
0.45<z<0.81 have either been identified directly from measured redshifts or
have been confirmed by the measurement of at least one redshift for galaxies
located along a red-sequence typical of cluster early-type galaxies. Lastly,
five candidates among those already observed in the infrared have (I-Ks) colors
consistent with them being in the redshift interval 0.8<z<1.1. The sample of
"confirmed" clusters, already the largest of its kind in the southern
hemisphere, will be further enlarged by ongoing observations.Comment: To appear in "Large Scale Structure in the X-ray Universe", ed. M.
Plionis and I. Georgantopoulos (Paris: Editions Frontieres), in pres
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