On the X-ray emission of the low-mass galaxy groups

It is shown that the low-mass groups obey the $L_{x}\sim\sigma_v^{4}$ law deduced for galaxy clusters. The impression of the more shallow slope of the $L_x-\sigma_{v}$ correlation for groups is created not by enhanced X-ray emission, but by underestimation of the radial velocity dispersion of some groups.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, accepted in ApJ

On the Xray Luminosity - velocity dispersion relation of groups of galaxies

We analyse the Lx-sigma relation for the new Mulchaey et al. group Atlas. We find that once we take into account the possible statistical bias introduced by the cutoff in luminosity, we recover a relation which is consistent with that of clusters, ie., Lx ~ sigma^4. The larger scatter of this relation for groups of galaxies could be attributed to an orientation effect, due to which the radial velocity dispersion of groups oriented close to orthogonal to the line of sight, would be underestimated. This effect could also contribute in the direction of flattening the slope of the group Lx-sigma relation.Comment: 6 pages, Astronomy & Astrophysics, in pres

Merging Galaxies in the SDSS EDR

We present a new catalog of merging galaxies obtained through an automated systematic search routine. The 1479 new pairs of merging galaxies were found in approximately 462 sq deg of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release (SDSS EDR; Stoughton et al. 2002) photometric data, and the pair catalog is complete for galaxies in the magnitude range 16.0 <= g* <= 20. The selection algorithm, implementing a variation on the original Karachentsev (1972) criteria, proved to be very efficient and fast. Merging galaxies were selected such that the inter-galaxy separations were less than the sum of the component galaxies' radii. We discuss the characteristics of the sample in terms of completeness, pair separation, and the Holmberg effect. We also present an online atlas of images for the SDSS EDR pairs obtained using the corrected frames from the SDSS EDR database. The atlas images also include the relevant data for each pair member. This catalog will be useful for conducting studies of the general characteristics of merging galaxies, their environments, and their component galaxies. The redshifts for a subset of the interacting and merging galaxies and the distribution of angular sizes for these systems indicate the SDSS provides a much deeper sample than almost any other wide-area catalog to date.Comment: 58 pages, which includes 15 figures and 6 tables. Figures 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, and 14 are provided as JPEG files. For online atlas, see http://home.fnal.gov/~sallam/MergePair/ . Accepted for publication in A

Properties of Hickson Compact Groups and of the Loose Groups within which they are Embedded

We use the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) redshift catalogue to look for galaxies with accordant redshifts in the nearby environment (up to ~2 Mpc) of 15 Hickson Compact Groups (HCG) and 7 more HCG+environment from the literature. We find that: (a) HCG's tend to be aligned with the overall galaxy distribution in their ~1 Mpc environment, (b) the well-established orientation effect by which the group velocity dispersion correlates with group axial ratio, is present also in the HCG+environment systems, (c) the radial velocity dispersion of the HCG+environment systems and of ordinary poor groups only weakly depends on the group richness, (d) the mean absolute K-band magnitude of E/S0 galaxies in HCGs is similar to that in ordinary poor groups, and is brighter than that of isolated E/S0's, indicating that they were formed by the merging of two galaxies of similar luminosity, (e) the fraction of E/S0 galaxies in these HCGs depends only weakly on the group richness and velocity dispersion, (f) the fraction of AGNs is similar in the HCGs and their close environment, while that of starbursts is significantly higher in the HCGs, (g) the fraction of AGNs and starbursts is anti-correlated with the velocity dispersion of the HCG+environment systems. Furthermore, the observed fractions of early-type and active galaxies as well as their correlations with the group velocity dispersion suggests a picture by which nuclear activity and galaxy transformation by merging is instigated by effective gravitational interactions in the low-velocity dispersion groups, which then dynamically evolve via virialization processes to higher velocity dispersion groups, which thus have a higher fraction of early-type galaxies.Comment: accepted for publication in A